Walking with the Ghost
by at5115
Summary: I was staring at a changeling: enormous and angular, comprised of russet skin and heat. A blazing, glorious sun that washed over me in ways subtle and wise, burning away the shadows of twilight... Jacob and Bella FanFic taking place mid-New Moon.
1. Chapter 1 Bella

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

It took only a moment for the icy skin of First Beach to break under my weight, the vacuum of the arrival drawing me deep enough to be caught by the tow.

Before I could catch a breath, before I could consciously remember to pull air into my lungs, I was under again. Dark hair pulled through the rough foam of the surface before being swallowed whole. My throat was thick with water, my chest in a vice as I panicked. _What the hell are you doing, Bella Swan?_ There was no ethereal cadence in the voice that clamored for my attention. It was furious, sensible, making commands with firm authority. _Push upwards! Get above the water! Kick those damn legs! Live! Live!_ I supposed, in the half-conscious moments I spent clawing for the surface, my eyes focused on the diluted light that skimmed the dark water, that this voice that had stoked my own anger, channeled every ounce of my dimming strength was something I had temporarily misplaced. The quiet reason that had lived under the shadow of Edward Cullen's glamour.

It was ironic that I would find myself just as I was dying.

***

It was the low pant of dogs that broke me to consciousness.

My eyes were slow to respond to the impulse to open them, heavy and shy against the irregular pelting of cold rain on my face. My fist was curled around beach grit and something was pulling the wet tangle of my hair so hard I thought my head was going to explode under the pressure. I drew in my first conscious breath too recklessly and my lungs spasmed wetly against the bruised cage of my chest. I rolled weakly, turning my face into the beach as I vomited up what felt like oceans of salt water and bile. Oh fuck, I was alive.

I was not alone. As I buckled under the weight of lifting myself away from the watery purge of my stomach, I felt strong hands at my forearm, bringing me upward. _No, no, no, no_, my inner voice cried out in mingled shame and horror at the thought of someone finding me here. Of what they would say to Charlie. But it was too much effort to struggle and I fell bonelessly into a crushing embrace. I was enveloped by the scent of cedar, an earthy thing that seemed to emanate from the burning body around me.

"J-Jacob?" I stammered, my throat burning as the name came out a croaky whisper. I was a fraction of an inch away from his mouth, watching it move in words I couldn't hear. I tried to focus, disbelieving my luck, and forced my limp hands up to his face, beach grit tracking the path of my palms. I dragged in a painful breath as I watched the rain over his lips. Without thinking, I traced them with my thumb, bringing the finger to my parched mouth. Jacob stilled, his words falling around me as his grip tightened. I caught his eyes in the same moment that I caught my breath.

I realized that while I had spent ages looking at Jacob, I had never truly _seen_ him.

I was staring at a changeling: enormous and angular, comprised of russet skin and heat. A blazing, glorious sun that washed over me in ways subtle and wise, burning away the shadows of twilight. All the while hiding nothing of itself. With a clarity I had apparently revoked since coming to Forks, I knew something had shifted in me. I was waking from a dream.

So of course, I burst into tears.


	2. Chapter 2 Jacob

I followed tensely, tufts of shed undercoat drifting behind me like brown dandelion fluff, catching in the low lying ferns and in the stunted saplings that grew close to the ground. Sam, a shadowy form several feet to my front left, continued on through the thick woods surrounding First Beach. He was limping slightly, compliments of the leech we had momentarily lost, although his gait had grown increasingly easier as our legs ate the miles. My mind recycled a litany of profanities laced with worry for Bella, the refrain of which Sam caught and lengthened his stride.

_Jacob. Please_. I knew Sam's patient appeal referenced the string of vivid fantasies that filtered through my mind in the space of a heartbeat. In my defense, over half of those fantasies featured the dismemberment of a red-haired blood-sucker. The imagined reception afterwards – featuring one Bella Swan – was, perhaps, when my thoughts got away from me. They had a tendency to do that.

_I can't help it_.

_You never can_. Sam's chuffing sounded eerily like laughter, close enough to be in my ear.

Victoria's scent in the woods – sickeningly sweet like sugar from the cane – was everywhere and nowhere. We had followed the trails for days and nothing here was fresh. But if she came back up along the beach, using the water as her medium… My mind flickered over a dark shore and a bone white driftwood tree.

_She _should_ be at Billy's. _Sam thought as our passing rousted a flock of sparrows, who took off into the sky under a furious upsurge of wings. _I don't like that she wanders with Victoria loose. It's not very wise_.

My thoughts warred. I worried about the same thing and yet, bristled at a perceived slight to Bella. Sam caught all of the chaotic mind work, but didn't immediately respond. He was only three years older than I was, but had the patience of a much older man. _I know_, my thoughts finally coalesced, _but she really is very stubborn about certain things._ Like most of the women in my life. I knew Sam could feel the uneasiness in my response – fueled by the knowledge that what I shared with Bella was far more intense than love, but unsure of where I stood. I didn't like it. But did I have a choice?

_First Beach_, Sam decided and we changed directions completely in synch with one another. Sam was already running normally, the aftermath of Victoria's escape no longer visible.

***

Although the wind was against us, I caught Bella's scent almost immediately.

I could be surrounded by a thousand strange scents and I would be able to find hers in a heartbeat. It was laced with the smell of ripe strawberries and the underlying perfume of her body. I could smell every mood that passed through her as her body shifted and reacted to stimulus, to me. But I would never tell her that. I knew the scent of Bella's anger.

My worst fears, however, could never compete with reality. _This is Bella's truck._ Sam thought with great certainty. It had, after all, sat in our drive for decades before it was hers. Both of our eyes found the narrow pathway that led to the cliffs.

_No!_ The word was a sonic boom between us and I sprung so suddenly and with so much force that I was nearly a quarter mile ahead of Sam when I landed. The air was heavy with the threatening storm, the dirt of the path giving way to rock in an instant. Her smell was thick on the cliff face, caught in the ferns that pressed against her jeans and the rocks she had touched.

_Shoes. Shoes on the cliff's edge_. Without conscious thought – although Sam caught my intent immediately – I jumped off the cliff.

I broke through the surging current as a man, coming up for air and then breaking through the rough surf. The undertow was very strong, but I was stronger. The lightning in the horizon added to my fear. _Bella, Bella, Bella_… After a lifetime of panic, I caught the dim flutter of something dark on the water, clinging to the churning foam like unanchored seaweed.

She was as cold as ice when I caught her, bringing her above the waterline. Still, her skin a bluish white. "Bella, Bella…" We were on the beach in a moment, Sam coming through the tree line as I carried her limp body away from the water.

"Is she breathing?" He asked. He caught the terse shake of my head as I laid her on the beach, supporting her neck. We had both grown up near the water and were familiar with drowning. The waters of First Beach were mercurial and had taken lives before.

She was as tiny as a child and her mouth was coppery and cold beneath mine, my hands shaking as I pressed against her chest hoping that I didn't break her ribs. I had no idea how long she had been in the water or whether she was still alive. I have never hated another being in my life so much as I despised the Cullens at that moment. _What choice do we have in the wake of their destructive path?_ They had made monsters of the Quileute and stolen the life of the only person I would ever love, as surely as if they had fed on her. My breath was hot and staccato against her cheek as I willed Bella to life.

"_Please, _Bella…" My own voice startled Sam: a dark, husky whine that was more feral that man. Above us, the storm broke overhead, needle pricks of cold rain ricocheting off my naked body, off the translucent skin of Bella's face.

She seized beneath me, bubbles breaking on her mouth as her lungs worked to expel the water she had swallowed. I moved back, slightly, as she struggled to turn, falling on her side as she vomited on the shore.

"That's a good sign," Sam offered, wanting but not wanting to interfere.

Her arms wobbled as she tried to lift herself, collapsing under the weight of her body. She was completely exhausted and I pulled her to me, bringing her cold body against the heat of my chest. I could feel the hitch of her heart through the transparency of her wet shirt, her wicked coughing as her body clutched for air. _My breath_, I thought with a primal satisfaction. _She was breathing my breath_.

"J-Jacob?" Her throat had been burned by the water, but the syllables of my name had never sounded sweeter. She questioned as if there was ever a doubt I wouldn't always be there.

"I'm here." I said, hoping she didn't notice the huskiness of my own voice. Everything I wanted to say choked at my throat, broken and unformed thoughts too strong to fit into a vocabulary I was capable of. Although I knew I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with this small, willful girl – I had never believed it was possible to feel what I felt at that moment. I caught high notes of emotion: fury, awe – something I could understand. The rest was completely beyond me. And it hurt.

I don't know if she heard me, but something turned in my abdomen when her dark eyes finally reached mine. The look of wonder painted there was raw and obvious. She was such a cautious person – except, apparently, when attempting to get away from me – and I was instantly worried. Had she hit her head? A darker thought, _was she seeing _me?

And then her palms were cupping my face, one thumb tracing the contours of my mouth. Sam actually looked away from us, pity in his eyes, moving back towards the trees. My own breath stilled, rain showering us where we sat on the beach. But time quite suddenly stopped when she ran her tongue along the rough surface of her thumb, tasting the rain from my face. I was keenly aware of my own nudity at that instant, the shadowy impression of her aureole through the wet cotton of her shirt.

For one long moment, I was watching her tremble on the edge of a precipice less real and yet more dangerous than the one she had already, stupidly, taken. She was walking with the ghost but I was the one possessed. I ached. "Bells," her name was another word for _stop._

She burst into tears.


	3. Chapter 3 Bella

I was pressed so tightly to Jacob that the hard pelt of rainwater on my skin turned to steam between us.

As rational as I thought I was capable of being, I couldn't stop crying. And rationally I wanted to, as every hitch and breath was excruciating. I can't express exactly how humbling it is to be pressed up against someone – _it's just _Jacob, I reminded myself – bridged by ropy strings of salty mucus with the low slosh of water in my stomach rising in my throat. So I wasn't surprised when Jacob stopped me, stilling my awkward flailing with my name. Usually everything that passed through Jacob's filter became simpler, easier. But the complications underfoot made me uncharacteristically angry with him. _Why am I always flotsam drifting between two tides?_ _When did Jacob become a tide?_ _And who in their right mind would put lips like those on a man? WHEN DID I START CONSIDERING JACOB A MAN?!?_

I was cold, wet, bruised and angry and this was just enough. "Jacob Black. Let me go." The quality of my voice, both raspy and low-pitched would have made me inaudible to anyone else, but I knew he heard me. The tide had pulled back at that exact moment, bringing an instant of near silence to the beach. His left eyebrow arched ironically, the long filaments of his lashes beaded with rain, and his stupidly lush lips quirked.

"If that's what you want..." He agreed and I applauded my victory. The moment he released me, however, I realized my body had the consistency of Jell-o. Barely. My teeth came down hard on my tongue as I fell backwards, taste buds registering the saltiness of my own blood. Jacob's hands caught my wrists before I hit the ground and absorbed most of the energy from the landing. My arms were slick with water, though, and I slid easily out of his grasp. His fingers tangled with mine a moment longer than was absolutely necessary as I lay there. "Of course," he offered, crouching low by my upturned head, "you know I'll never let you go. Not really." He absently thumbed my frown, as if reshaping the architecture of my lips. They tingled where his rough fingers ministered. "Not even if you try to kill yourself again," his voice was thick with emotion, deep with meaning.

"I didn't… That's not… " Everything in my head fizzled out, the balloon of my emotions deflating as quickly as if they'd been punctured.

The crackle of brush alerted me for the first time that we were not alone– a brown form in cut-off sweats peeling from the dark trees honestly attempting to make as much sound as possible. Sam. I knew this was for my benefit – as Jacob didn't need a warning and Sam was capable of moving more noiselessly than anyone had a right to.

"If you're done _playing_," the words cut me to the quick and I could almost hear the bones in Jacob's body snapping into attention beside me, "perhaps we can move this away from the Beach." Despite being thinner than Jacob and carrying a pair of shorts in his left hand, Sam crackled with intensity. "You may not have noticed, but not all of the vampires in our acquaintance stick to the Pact." He threw the shorts towards Jacob and offered me a mandatory hand, every muscle in my body throbbing as I came to my feet.

My thoughts snapped with my jaw: _Victoria. The Wolf Pack. James_… _Edward_. My shame was so intense that I almost wished Jacob had left me in the Pacific. The explanation in my own words, the usual shambling string of half-truths came down to: I jumped in the water so I could hear Edward Cullen's voice. No thought given to Renee, Charlie or the Pack who were risking their lives for the Quileute and by extension myself. No thought for Jacob. _Only for Edward, Bella Swan. How long will you be adrift – clutching at the broken things that wash up onto shore? _I didn't have an answer for that. This was not the first time the ever present hole in my chest ached – the aftereffects of a heart flayed raw – but it _was_ the first time I realized that the fibrous new growth of anger was just as resilient – if not moreso – than the paper thin growth of affection.

I wanted to explain myself, to make atonement if it were possible, but when I looked at Jacob my mouth went dry and my heart dropped into my abdomen. I was a little intimidated by Sam and… _Jacob Black was not wearing a stitch of clothing._

Jacob looked at me – my eyes dragged upwards from the dark thatch at the juncture of his thighs – and his eyes were fathomless. Sam dropped my arm as the black cotton skated up Jacob's lean hips, actually taking a step back from me. The way Jacob knew me – without my having to say anything – was so uncanny at times that I hoped, _prayed_, that he had no idea how warm I was. The corner of his mouth turned upwards slightly, almost ruefully.

"Did you hit your head?" The words were Sam's, softer edged than I deserved and slightly uncomfortable. I shook my head. "I'm sorry we can't be more considerate," he made a waving gesture with his hand, before adding, "about everything." There were worlds of meaning in his last word, some on levels I couldn't comprehend. "But there are things going on right now that are bigger than you, bigger than me." He looked at Jacob, whose face had closed to focused attention. "I have to go to the Clearwater's. Now. Bella, do you need to go to the hospital?"

"No," the word flew out of my mouth with the velocity of a bullet. "No," I amended, still raspy but with less force. "I'm fine." I had no idea how I would explain this to Charlie.

"I don't think –" Jacob was right behind me, one hot hand going to my hip easily, almost casually. I shivered under the possessive touch and the palm fitted itself against me like a second skin. He was extraordinarily large.

"I'm fine." I tried to put every ounce of meaning within the two words. It seemed to be enough for Sam.

"Jacob," there was a tone to Sam's voice that sharpened it, stiffening Jacob behind me. His words to Jacob were a tumble of vowels and exhaled breaths – Quileute. I could only catch names: Jacob, Harry, Leah, Seth. "Take her home. Don't leave until you hear from me," he said in English as he turned to leave. He paused a moment, then threw over his shoulder, "Try to stay out of trouble." I thought the words were directed at me, but he was looking at Jacob.

*

The dark copper curls broke through the surf like the popping of a cork, black water churning where the pale torso emerged. Victoria blinked the salt water out of her eyes, strong white legs kicking in place as she hung suspended near an outcropping of rocks.

She had been so close this time. _Within a heartbeat of the bitch_. Victoria had been drawn to the slowing tattoo of a human heart – _one_ human heart - momentarily afraid that the life would extinguish before she could claim it. _No fair if she dies before I kill her_. _For James_.

But the wolf had been faster.

_Wolves_. The surface of the water was oily with their musk making her reflexively gag. She had never seen their like. Underestimated them. Been hurt by them. By children.

_Take her home_, their voices travelled to her with the clarion quality of a bell.

Her lips curled as she dropped beneath the skin of water, strong arms propelling her towards the shore. Towards Forks.


	4. The girl who ran with wolves, Leah

I was on fire.

My fingers knotted in the sweat dampened cotton of day old sheets as I writhed against the assault of my body. The nerves beneath my burning skin cried and shook against their confinement. Words leaked from my mouth tangled in childhood and dreams: _In the great night my heart will go out_. _I will go out, I will go out._

"_No talking, no talking. The snow is falling_." The hands at my forehead and throat smelled keenly of lavender Tide and Ivory soap. Beneath that lay the perfume of my mother who must have recognized some of the chaos of my dreamscape as she washed my dying song with a cold hand towel and her deep voice. "You are on fire, _my love_." I could hear worry in the endearment, something that had been lost between us – as had her simple touch – for many years. "I think you have the same thing Seth has."

"I h..hope not." I bit out the words through the throbbing of my jaw, unable to focus in the dark room. I moved towards her sounds: the musical clink of her beaded necklace, the rustle of her pants on my sheets. The water dripping off the wash cloth beat an irregular tattoo against my shoulder, something I found increasingly unbearable. My eyes watered and I turned away from her, not wanting anyone to see the weakness. "How…h-how is he?" My voice was shaky and deeper than usual.

"Your father won't let me call the doctor." Her voice had dropped an octave. I could hear the pursing of her lips, the furrowing of her brow. "He had Sam Uley in there, if you can believe it." The rancor in her voice surprised me. But I had not truly listened to my mother's voice in a long time. "I wouldn't have him in the house. After what he did to you… but your father insisted." She didn't say that he had asked about me, had stood in the doorway of my room with the hallway lights behind him watching me pretend to sleep, while I watched him through slitted eyelids.

We were always at somewhat of an impasse: I loved him and he loved Emily and pretended to care for me. Luckily for him, I was apparently dying. _In the great night my heart will go out._

It hurt to hear Sam's name. Hurt in ways that never seemed to heal, but just fueled my anger. Something in my knee tore as rage colored my vision red and the sound I made then was alien and feral. The pain was excruciating and even Sue could hear the splintering of bone. She jumped from the bed, frantic and buzzing around me. "Harry! Harry!"

I began to lose consciousness in degrees. The room lightened incrementally around me – posters becoming legible, the ticking of my bedside clock counting down the seconds. I could hear the scurry of something inside the walls, probably a mouse and the diluted sound of my father's voice through the wall by my head. _Don't worry, Seth. Embry and Paul are here._ Something fractured in my brain and my skin moved like taffy as the keening nerves beneath finally made their escape.

_I hurt, I hurt, I hurt, I hurt_.

It was both my mind and outside it.

_This is worse than the poison ivy I had last year._

It was… Seth. I remembered the red welts that had climbed his legs and forearms, the pink calamine he had used. Sam's laughter as he asked, _What did you think would happen when you cut through Jack's field?_ The night shirt tore beneath me as I pulsed with living anger, so tangible that I was sure it had forced my mother from the room.

_Le-Le?_

_Leah?_

Both names screamed simultaneously in my head. Seth's brightness claiming the nickname I hated more than life itself. And Paul. Within the space of two heartbeats, everything Paul had ever thought about me - everything _Sam_ had ever thought about me – flooded my head.

_It's a shame she's such a harpy. _

_Why can't I stop loving her?_

It was too much. A raw sob tore through me as my skin was flayed from my living body. My father crossed the threshold at the same moment, his cheeks pink from exertion. "Leah…" I could smell the bitter tang of his fear; see the shock in his unnaturally dilated pupils. And I heard the furious canter of his heart stutter and stop as he dropped to his knees before me. Reaching towards me with a lifeless hand.

_Daddy!_

Paul came through the front door in nothing but a pair of black shorts, the screen banging behind him, pulled off its hinges with the force of his entrance.

In the next room, the liquid sound of my brother's scream raised the hair at my spine as he caught my rage and amplified it. I heard the sound of Embry Call's voice filter in the hallway, making nonsense sounds attempting to reassure Seth.

_Daddy! Seth!_

Paul interpreted my forward movement as aggression, shaking off his own skin as he turned into a wolf before my eyes. His snarl was deep and echoed in the room as he advanced, my mother screaming behind him, "Harry! Ohmigod, Harry! Leah!" My body was awkward around me, caught now on four limbs. I stumbled slightly as Paul pounced, taking the extra skin at my neck in a bite that brought tears to my eyes and me to my knees. _Submit_, _Leah_. It didn't have the authority of an alpha and I strained against his hold, my father's inert body lying between us.

_Get off me you motherfucker. _I turned my body slightly, bending in ways I didn't think were possible and took a swipe at the sheath of his sex. I missed but was close enough to the mark to gain my freedom. But now there were two wolves, the second spotted like a leopard, leaner and cannier in its movements.

_Embry._

_Go to Seth_. _You're just pissing her off, you jackass._

_You try dealing with this bitch._

_Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…_ My mind was a litany onto itself, Paul backing up enough so that I could nuzzle the warmth of my father's still form.

_Jared, where the hell are you?_

_I'm coming. Why are there four voices? _

_Leah Shifted._

_Leah… Clearwater?_

_Do you KNOW another Leah?_

_Ambulance. Coming._

Embry latched on the ruff still wet from Paul's saliva, tugging me towards the door. _We can't stay here. Must go. Now._ _Seth, too._ _Leah, I'm so sorry._ I felt the passing of Seth and Paul as they moved past me, the hallway barely big enough for one of us.

I looked towards my mother, the line of her mouth hard, phone still in hand. "Leah, go." She directed towards me, reading the indecision in my body language and eyes. I tried to explain, but my words – growls and yips – were unintelligible to her. _I didn't mean to… I don't know what is happening, but I didn't mean to… Daddy!_

Surprising both Embry and I – Embry irritating me by moving to keep himself between her and I, just in case, as if I would hurt her, as if he believed I had hurt my father – she came towards us, shakily extending a hand towards me as one would greeting a dog. I could smell her fear; hear the stuttering thrum of her heart. Her indrawn breath was for fortification and she came to her knees between myself and my father, running her palm against his pale face, the other very lightly through the rough fur of my left flank. "I never believed…" Her voice broke off in wonder, her fingers moving the damp hair from my father's forehead. "Oh, Harry," she exhaled my father's name on a sigh, "My poor Leah. I love you so much, but you must go with…" she stared at Embry, not recognizing him in wolf form, "them."

I nuzzled my mother's hair as I moved past her, drinking in the scent of her shampoo, the scent of my mother.

We fled like thieves in the early morning light, keeping to the woods and thick places. Seth, a sandy colored form, came beside me, our bodies touching each other as physically as our minds. I wanted to cry, but the only sound that broke from my throat was a whine so bright and feral that I swallowed the inclination.

Jared joined us as we ran through the morning, snippets of thought racing through my brain as Jacob and then, finally, Sam Shifted and linked with us. _Go back to the Clearwater's_, Sam's voice rang with the clarity of a leader, bringing us around and back to town. _Harry is on life support. We are following the Leech. I will meet you there._

_Oh, Le-Le_, _I would never have wished this on you_, this last on a visceral sigh. My abdomen clenched in response and I felt my anger leech from me as if a tangible plug had been pulled. Exhausted, bruised, I fell in the long grass along the road as my body involuntarily returned to the lean, brown shape of a girl.

I could no longer hear their voices, the voices of the Pack.

But Seth and Embry lay down beside me, still in the shape of wolves, their sun touched fur warm against the curve of my spine and stomach as I fell nearly catatonic.

When I woke, sunburned and textured in the dirt and grass that clung to my drying skin, Embry's arm curled over the bow of my waist, his fist beneath my small breasts.

_When Leah Clearwater awoke one morning from uneasy dreams she found herself transformed in her bed into a monster_.

In the guise of a girl, this thought was my own for the keeping.

Somewhere, my father was dying.


	5. Chapter 5 Jacob

The bouquet of Bella's arousal hit me with all the finesse of a sucker punch to the gut.

It bloomed between the three of us: achingly sweet and so potent I could almost feel her breath on my skin. I was having trouble breathing myself – but managed at least one thought. Her eyes dropped to my hips and I tore the waistband of my shorts in my haste to cover up the jut of my sex, the most obvious evidence of her effect on me. Everything was very close to the surface, scraped raw by the thought of losing her, the taste of her on my lips. I didn't trust myself at all, tucking my chagrin into a grimace I thought I hid well. I was glad the Pack wasn't eavesdropping on the incrediblyintimate turn of my mind. Thoughts of sharing this moment with anyone sent tremors through my torso, reverberating in the corded muscles of my arms into my fingertips. I exhaled sharply, willing myself to _calm the fuck down_.

Sam dropped Bella's hand like it was poisoned, taking a step back as he caught the drift of mingled lust and aggression rolling off me. My body was growling _Mine_, while my head was saying, _Alpha._ I had no idea which would win out.

"Did you hit your head?" The words were softer, a little tight around the edges and Bella's body relaxed with Sam's change of tone. She misinterpreted his anger entirely. Somewhere, Leah Clearwater – the phantom thought to Sam's every shared waking moment – had Shifted and her father was lying in intensive care in Forks. Jared and Paul were on rotation, looking for signs of the leech that had eluded us and Embry was alone with the Clearwaters. The Pack, which for all intents and purposes _was_ Sam, was drawn so tight I thought we might be on the verge of snapping. Yet my mind was caught on the black tangle of Bella's hair as wet tendrils traced her jaw. I was a creature of habit. _Bad habits_.

Bella shivered, a small gesture, as she declined Sam's suggestion to go to the ER in Forks. My hand went to her hip before I had consciously made the decision to do so. I realized it wasn't the right decision when her body vibrated against my palm, but I could no more remove my hand than stop breathing. Cullen be damned – _and_ _I'm sure he is_ - she was burning for_ me._

And I wasn't the only one who could smell it. Sam took a few clearing breaths, gathering reserves to himself that were desperately needed. None of us had caught a whole night's sleep in over a week, leaning so heavily on instinct that our actions were colored with a focus that clouded the distinction between humanity and animal intent. Sam was focused on Leah. And god help me, I was completely focused on Bella Swan, perhaps even to the detriment of myself.

_Strike that. _Always_ to the detriment of myself._

***

She was shaking by the time we reached the pick-up, rain having dampened the seat interiors from the open windows. I turned up the heat, the ghostly scent of tobacco and peppermint spilling through the vents along with recycled air.

Sam hadn't been completely explicit in whose home to take her, so long as I took her _home_. So I took matters into my own hands and drove her back to La Push.

_Bad habits._ Yeah, but I'd might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

The house was dark when I pulled into the front yard, cutting off the engine and moving around the truck to the passenger side door. The streetlight through the breath fogged windows traced Bella's skin, lengthening the shadowy crescent of her eyelashes against her cheeks. I opened the door and let my senses taste her. The perfume of her body intensified as I sought it out, the flutter of her pulse moving in time with her heart. For a moment I understood the appeal to Cullen: the heat at her wrists and neck fulgent with the essence of her. I brought my hand to her left cheek, the skin cool and soft beneath my rough palm, turning her face towards me.

Her eyes never opened as she moved into the curve my hand with her mouth, dragging in a shaky breath while gliding her lips against the skin. I exhaled into the cab, drawing the breath back again thick with her sweetness. I was so hot I thought I might melt the door handle, my knuckles white against the metal. The rain sizzled along the line of my shoulders, cooling as it followed the muscles of my torso.

Her right hand rose to cover the hand at her face. _My_ hand. "_Jake_," she sighed the name against me, the vibration of her voice revealing the curve of her lips hidden by my palm. "You taste like the earth."

"I think you're delirious." My words were tight as I pulled her towards me, carrying her high on my chest into the house. High enough she wouldn't feel me, using my right hand to shield her face from the rain. "Because, seriously Bells, tomorrow morning you're going to regret admitting you love me by comparing me with dirt."

"_Jacob Black_," she warned against my chest. A warning that reassured me that Bella Swan was actually going to be alright. And one that would have carried more weight if the heat of her face hadn't expanded around the syllables of my name, color flooding her cheeks as the blush burned through her.

I was about ready to drop, but I managed the door with one hand, moving through the dark house and towards the bathroom, palming the lights as I dropped her unsteadily on the tile. "Take a shower, Bells. You smell like dead fish." I was immune to the dark look she gave me, but not her mouth: red and bruised against her pale skin. I imagined they tasted like strawberries and salt water. _And someday, when you heal, they'll taste like me._

I waited until I heard water running before I brought a change of clothes, something Rachel had left behind in her haste to get out of La Push every August. The door didn't lock – I had vague memories of breaking it about a month ago – and Bella didn't hear me as I left them on the counter. I grabbed her wet clothes: jeans stiff from the pacific, a white cotton shirt glistening with sand and the tank top she'd been wearing beneath it.

In the hallway, leaning against the wall outside the bathroom, I ran her small, dark briefs through my fingers. _Dead fish my ass_, I thought, drinking them through my mouth and nose. _She smells like fire._

I frowned as another smell, tide washed and surf scraped to near transparency, filled my senses. _Vampire_.

My knees buckled as I realized how close Victoria had come to her.


	6. Chapter 6 Bella

Jacob was unconscious in the hallway when I finished in the bathroom.

I hadn't appreciated the full spectrum of his changes until I had to step over the giant whose bulk dwarfed the narrow hallway. It was hard not to feel insignificant under the circumstances. Unfortunately, what I was feeling was more like a walking bruise in really tight boy shorts and tank top. I don't know where he got the ensemble but I had discovered two things about her: (a) she was very fond of Victoria Secret body sprays and (b) she was at least two cup sizes larger than I was. I had never spent much time thinking about Jacob's love life – _Maybe because you took his affections for granted_, the wry voice in my head suggested – but it wasn't a stretch to think of this new thing in Jacob's skin with girls two cup sizes larger than I was.

I didn't like that at all.

Regardless of whether I was comfortable having such a strong opinion or even had a right to judge in the first place was a moot point. It was becoming obvious even to me that a part of me – the part that showed up whenever blood was shed or I hit my head – seriously appreciated the cut of this Jacob's jib. I had a bad feeling (or what _should _have been a bad feeling) that _that_ Bella was the one who had shown up after jumping off the cliffs at First Beach. And she was not entirely an objective party when it came to dark eyed boys who weren't entirely boys. _Yeah. But just remember who saved your life today. _Me_ and that small giant in the hallway. Not a Cullen to be seen – or _seeing_._ I shrugged off the thought. It was just a little too close for comfort.

A floorboard creaked under my weight and Jacob reflexively grabbed my ankle – the movement so fast that I almost tumbled over mid-stride. His second hand went to my thigh and I was sure for a second that the impression of his hand was burned on the skin. "And where are you sneaking off to?" His voice was gravelly with sleep, one dark eye opened and on me. There was no way I was sneaking anywhere – I'd of needed a chainsaw just to break free from his hold.

"Somewhere with a blanket as someone took my clothes hostage," I said, color flooding my face as his eyes dropped in tandem with my own. I had seriously never worn anything that put my pubic bone into such stark relief – unless we were counting the very _non-public_ institution of underwear – so while I may not have smelled like dead fish any longer, I certainly felt like one out of water. That standing it was at Jake's eye level was more than mortifying. "I was aiming for the couch. And probably a phone. I know I spend a lot of time here, but Charlie is probably going to wonder where I am."

Parts of Jacob creaked and popped as he rose, sounding just as bad as I felt. But he remained, visually at least, unmarked. Whereas my body was a roadmap of the last day: a shallow cut on my head I had found while shampooing, what felt like a broken rib under my breasts from Jacob's attempts at CPR and a throat so raw I was parceling out the need to swallow. "He's at the hospital," Jacob said, adding as I quirked a brow, "Charlie."

"A preemptive attempt to find me?" I asked wryly, not without some humor. But Jacob's look stilled me, answering without words. "Charlie's not…"

"No. Harry Clearwater had a heart attack this morning." I had only met Harry once – not far from where I was standing now, in fact – but I remembered him as an expansive man with a quick smile. A good friend of Billy… and Charlie. _Charlie_. Integral parts of my brain started to function, things clicking from the past hour.

"Leah." I said the name, remembering the names I had cherry picked out of Sam's Quileute. The syllables had quite an effect on Jacob, who suddenly looked like he'd been stabbed. I had a terrible feeling – augmented by the sensation of my heart plummeting into my stomach – that I was wearing the clothes of the half remembered girl, Sam's _Ex_. Ex defined at that moment as an attractive girl, two cup sizes larger than I was, who Jacob probably found attractive.

Jacob misread the frown that dropped the corners of my mouth, cupping my chin to bring my falling face back into sight. "Seriously, Bells. You are too perceptive by half." His mouth twisted ruefully. "Except when it really matters," he added, the corner of his lush mouth twisting up in the mockery of a smile.

"What does that mean?" I queried, my raspy voice raising an octave as I swam with embarrassment, remembering Leah's onyx dark eyes and an exotic beauty mirrored in Sue Clearwater's features. Even if I couldn't remember _exactly_, my imagination was very helpfully recreating the rest. _Why_ should _Jacob hang over me?_ I thought. _Who wants to be the consolation prize?_

"Not that that's a bad thing…" Jacob back tracked, obviously catching some sign that I was getting angry and assuming it was at criticizing my perceptive properties. "You wouldn't be here now if you weren't." His voice dropped. "And that's a very, very good thing."

He disarmed me completely, _again_, leaving me to maneuver on a shifting playing field. I mimed talking on a phone and slid past his bulk towards the receiver in the front room – wondering if werewolf powers included some sort of low octave vocal attack. Although it wouldn't be half as effective without the medium of dispersal. Seriously, whoever put those lips on a man was not thinking clearly. At all.

I finally caught Charlie at the hospital, having apparently left his cell in the cruiser, after having him paged. He sounded exhausted. But despite the lack of sleep, he picked up on my maligned vocal chords immediately.

"You're not coming down with Mono are you?" It took me a few seconds – far too many, actually – to get it. _Nice, Charlie_.

"No." The raspy sigh was not helping my case. I caught the snick of the bathroom door closing behind Jacob, a second later the hiss of the shower head.

"But that's where you are now? At Billy's?" It really wasn't a question, although the rising tone at the end was a politeness. I must have hesitated a moment too long, running through a battery of increasingly unlikely ways to explain myself, because his next line of attack started with, "Sam Uley mentioned Jake was taking you home." Apparently, there was a sharp learning curve in navigating the hazards of a Post-Phoenix Charlie.

"Yes, he was… but we got caught out in the rain. La Push was closer, so we stopped in for towels." There was silence on Charlie's end, and I waited a second before adding, "There may have been some unplanned submersion at First Beach. You can thank Jacob later."

Charlie actually laughed through the line, but it was a hollow sound out of synch with his usual mien. "I will. _If_ you don't come down with Mono." I heard him shift, the rustle of his polyester jacket translating through the line. "You might as well stay there if Billy doesn't mind. Harry Clearwater – you remember him from the dinner at Billy's? – had a heart attack. Sometime this morning. I'm here with Sue and have to cover a shift in about an hour. I'll swing by tomorrow to pick you up for breakfast, Bells. Early." It was the closest he would get to asking me about things with Jacob. Another kindness as I couldn't even begin to explain things to myself, let alone Charlie.

I had sunk into the couch as I talked to Charlie, drawing an old patchwork quilt around my shoulders for warmth and security. It smelled like tobacco smoke and fabric softener and I played with the fringe while I listened to the shower. _Mono_, I thought with a small smile, the tick of the heater behind me kicking on. _I've never even kissed him_.

I fell asleep before I could convince myself that it didn't matter.


	7. Chapter 7 Jacob

Bella was unconscious on the couch when I came out of the bathroom wondering whether our towels had shrunk in the wash or whether I had grown again. _Growing spurts_, as I knew them, were one thing. But there was nothing textbook about fractured bones and shredded tendons that regenerated themselves overnight. I was in pain most of the time, which brought my rage closer to the surface – like a match head primed on the friction strip. Thankfully more safety and less strike-anywhere for the time being. Unfortunately, sympathy was a little thin on the ground these days.

Watching Bella sleep under the faded edges of my mother's quilt, something she had made before the accident, did funny things to my mind. I didn't know about the whole imprinting business – fat lot of good it had done miserable Sam or obsessed Jared – but I was fairly certain it would never happen to me. I had already found what I didn't know I was looking for _before_ I Shifted. Accepted it, welcomed it and suffered for it. I didn't need fate to guide me – my fate was lying on the couch, half dry hair a dark corona tangled around her white skin, lips slightly open as she breathed.

I had very nearly lost her today.

I understood a lot of things about Bella Swan – probably more than she did about herself sometimes. I knew that Cullen, in true blood sucking form, had torn her up in ways that he'd probably had lifetimes to perfect. The brush off phrase: _It's not you, it's me_ honed to centuries of cutting precision. _And I bet she believed it, too. After all, she doesn't even think she deserves me._ I had to tap down the shift-shiver that ran down the line of my spine as I thought about _that_ idiocy. In true Bella fashion, she had swallowed down Cullen's poison and turned it inside where it would, in theory, hurt only her.

Internalizing it had made it larger, more important than it would have been in the light. Losing perspective. That was one thing that pack mind really hammered home. When one mind called a spade a spade, there were always four more to remind us it was still just a shovel.

I knew I could protect her while she healed. That I would be anything she needed me to be without having to ask or compromise. The wolf made me strong enough to be with her while my heart was human enough to keep her. Because I would take her as she came: scarred, stubborn, hopelessly, perfectly _human_. No pedestals to fall from.

_Well, Bells,_ I thought to myself, capturing the sigh she released in sleep. _I only have sixteen years – _twenty-five _if you count the nine I acquired in the last month – of experience. But somehow… somehow I'm going to win this thing. I have to._

It was all a matter of logistics, really. A point made clearer a few minutes later when I accidentally hit Bella's head on the doorjamb – misgauging the width. She didn't, thankfully, wake up, although I lost ten years of my life in that moment. It was a good thing we lived so long.

_No pedestals here._

***

The scream woke me from a dead sleep feeling vaguely like I left something behind in the Pacific.

It was eerily quiet in the front room where, apparently, I had fallen asleep at some point. The cable box was blinking, suggesting that the power had gone out during the course of the night. The consistency of the light outside suggested that it was still night. Wolf senses didn't include an internal clock – or one that I'd found yet – so it was anyone's guess at the time.

Out of a newly acquired habit I drew in the air, tasting and testing for _special_ visitors. Not that I thought it was even remotely likely that a leech would venture into La Push – let alone into a house that reeked of wolves. But even Victoria hadn't known what we were… the first time. It was still raining outside, a metallic ding against the tin roof overhead. And beneath that was a low whimper, as if something was injured and alone. _Bella_.

Thankfully no one was around to witness my inglorious fall as soon as I tried to stand up. Couch engineering did not accommodate anything in the territory of La Push boys and sleeping with my knees dangling off the armrest had effectively nixed walking until the blood returned to my legs. I like to think that it was moments like these – not so much the action as my humanity - that would endear me to Bella. Or at the very least are never spoken of again.

They certainly wouldn't help my standing with the Pack.

I had deposited her in my bed as Rachel and Rebecca's room, compliments of their bunk beds, had become something of a Pack flophouse. Particularly for Embry whose mother made staying home difficult, what with the whole juvenile delinquent card he was playing to keep her in the dark. Dad was really cool with everything – outside of the eating out of house and home – and his position on the Rez eased truancy visits substantially. Hunting Victoria and her kind didn't really take into consideration the school calendar.

I didn't need lights; Bella was the brightest thing in the room. Her skin was unnaturally fair against the mussed darkness of my sheets, having kicked off the blanket which lay in a tangled heap on the floor. At some point, the fancy edge of Rachel's tank top – a size or two too large on the top – dipped to catch the spill of her left breast, the nipple rubbed to a peak by the lacy border.

My mouth went dry while my eyes marked the distance to the lodestone she was.

She whimpered again, a sound roughened by her scraped throat, calling me more viscerally than any Alpha's dictates. I was powerless against it - if I even _had_ power against it - my shadow covering her before I even realized I had moved. I literally caught the next nonsense sound from her lips, my forefinger attempting to redraw the unease it covered. My scent, my nearness stoked some ember of coherent thought in her as I heard the panted syllables of my name. Coupled with the pooling of wetness in her borrowed shorts, I lost reasoning Jacob as my desire to possess, to take rode me hard.

"_You haven't even kissed me_," her words were petulant and my tongue laved them, following the path my fingers had forged. Bella's mouth opened under me with an unexpected ferocity that robbed my breath as easily as the heart that was already hers.

She was in my head, on my skin – marking me as surely as if I'd been tattooed. Her small fingers threaded through my shorn hair, heating my scalp as she tugged and pulled, beckoning me closer, tighter. She _was_ fire, burning with it, throbbing with it.

I fell over her, catching the weight of my body on my forearms, before plundering her mouth with my tongue. Her body was hot and silky, smooth against the wiry hair of my legs, the rough line of my jaw. Like a finely tuned spring she popped with the lightest of inducements, melting under my body, but never growing still. Instead, _everything_ moved under me – her legs against mine, her arms through my hair and over the sinew of my shoulders and her mouth inside mine.

Balancing on my left side, I licked the inside of her mouth while I absently thumbed the hard bead of her nipple, dragging the flesh into her breast and then releasing it to jut darkly upward. She hissed against my tongue, her body arching closer to mine. Every action was instinct in the absence of experience, my mouth leaving hers to trail the curve of her jaw, vibrating against the pulse point of her neck before moving against her shoulder bone. Because of our height difference, her thighs cradled my sex, opening to my heat in a move that threatened to consume me.

Our scent was thick in the heated air of the room, something that even a non-Wolf would catch. It fed into my arousal, heightening it and sent me into a frenzy of taste and touch. My mouth took her breast, the flesh feverish under my lips. My right hand dropped to the stretched tautness of her stomach, exposed as her writhing had ridden the tank top upwards.

I caught the subtle vibrations of Bella's body stilling beneath me, the quick, indrawn breath she took as my hand touched her torso. I paused where I was, her nipple lightly held between my teeth.

_Pain_.

I tongued her nipple in passing, washing the traces of my teeth as I drew myself up over her, the quality of light enough that I could see her face. I almost fractured again at the softness my fingers and tongue had made of her features, over the swollen lips. "Jake, you don't…" her words evaporated as her eyes changed, pupils dilating to compensate for the light, the effects of the startlement that shifted her features in subtle ways as she looked at me.

I slid the tank top up further, shocked when the white skin gave over to a darkening - _hand-shaped_ - bruise that covered most of her torso. "_I'm sorry_," my voice was whispered, but still too loud between us, my eyes on the injury that was clearly my handiwork. "I didn't mean..."

Bella's forehead creased as confusion and then numbness washed over her. I read shame and embarrassment in the flurry of small gestures: small hands pulling up the tank top, her face turning away from me, night blackened hair falling over her throat and cheek.

For a long moment, I didn't understand at all. I had the potential to hurt her, I _had_ hurt her. And, yet, _she_ was ashamed? I let the question filter through the disconnected hallways of my mind, trying to pull up _something_ that would clue me in to what was happening. It kept running back to Cullen – _one track mind much, Jake?_ – but even I had to concede that I was complicit here, as the part-time owner of the body currently pinning her to the bed. While I was by no means the sharpest tack in the box, I had developed my work-arounds. And I had never been afraid to confront things head on.

"_Bells."_ There was a firmness in my voice that seemed to come from outside of me, catching the quality of Sam's confident way of talking. It was like listening to an older, more assured Jacob and as I let the word travel the room's acoustics and wash over Bella, I knew that it had come from _within_ me. _So, those nine years _do _count_. _Sweet_.

Bella heard me – no question about that – and turned to face me. She was the bravest girl I had ever known, in so many ways, and the glint of moisture in her eyes made me furious at myself.

"_Bells_," I repeated her name, thumbing the single tear that cut along the shadowed angles of her face and erasing it with the aid of my forefinger. "Isabella Swan. I love you with all of my heart. _All of it_. My cards have been on the table since almost the first time I met you. Just sort of trumped by other parties." I took a shaky breath, trying to draw my composure around me like a cloak.

She took a deep breath, exhaling relief as her warm breath hit my tensed abdomen. And it popped in me, to the point that there was no way it wasn't audible to the _world_ in that moment. This had nothing to do with the palm print on her torso, not for her. Something in my pulling back had triggered her embarrassment. _Did she think I didn't want her_? I dismissed that theory, as the evidence to the contrary was stronger than words.

"Be that as it may, I don't know what I'm doing." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I blinked wondering if I even had a brain to mouth filter. _Wow, honesty much, Jake_? "And this..." I traced along the edges of the livid bruise on her torso, her stomach trembling beneath my hands. "I don't ever want to hurt you and I don't know if I can control it. You're so _small_." But small wasn't what I really meant, not really. More appropriately: delicate, breakable, _beautiful_. I ran a hand through my hair, trying to gather thoughts into something close to comprehensible language. She was so quiet under me, dark eyes liquid with unshed tears that I periodically had trouble thinking.

Bella reached for my face with both hands and tried to pull my head towards hers. "At least humor me," she quipped as her arms strained against my body's instinct to retreat, "it's not like I cry over boys all the time, you know." She arched a brow, the action counter to the watery darkness of her eyes. "_Usually_."

I allowed her to draw me closer. "_Jake_," her kiss was feather light against the corner of my mouth. "I don't know why you love me. I don't understand at all. I'm an awkward, average – painfully _normal – _girl— " she touched my mouth when I opened it to speak, bearing away thought in the palm of her hand "I don't know _anything _anymore. Not me, not _you_ -"

"Then I'll show you," I said against her mouth.

And I did – very carefully this time – as I tasted the soap on her skin, her shivers as I tongued and touched and _loved_ every visible part of her body. She softened and melted under me until the perspiration on my skin was hers, Rachel's borrowed clothing somewhere in the dark corners of the room where I'd thrown them. Careful to hover over her bruised abdomen, my left hand – tremendously dark against the luminescence of her skin – cupped the furred arch of her sex and paused there, feeling the erratic beat of her heart. "_Jake_…" I didn't even know that was possible.

The wolf wanted to taste her heat.

Her fingers - her two hands cupping my single hand - were tied around mine, the muscles of my shoulders and back bunching as I stretched to nuzzle her sex, drawing in the scent with my nose and mouth. I had never, _never_ smelled anything as delicious as Bella. "_Jacob?_" her raw voice queried, "_What… are you … doing?_" I had no idea, but nothing on earth could have stopped me, her question bracketed by panting that was unbelievably arousing.

I traced the folds of her opening, feeling her shy and then ease into the hesitant, personal touch of my tongue. The long fingers of my free hand following the channel of her slit before my forefinger slid inside. She groaned above me and the movement of her hips brought her closer and harder against my mouth and finger. _Careful Jake_, I cautioned myself knowing that her heat could spark mine at any instant, the friction strip to my match.

To say I was surprised when Bells pulsed against my tongue a moment later was an understatement, her body constricting the finger inside her. I lost her for a second – the unexpectedly carnal creature in my grasp caught in a staccato nerve loop as she cried something into the dark room.

I wanted Bella in ways that made me shake. But in all honesty – _I could feel my Pack stock plummeting as I thought it_ – I wanted, I _needed_ Bella to choose me. She had to look at _me_ and see _me_, not just a ghostly image of her life without Cullen. She had to be _in_ love with me free from the coercion of near death experiences or the reverberation of my lust through her body. As hot as I was, I thought the last bit would take a few months,_ at least._

For the first time, I didn't know if love was enough. I would have to be cunning. I would have to be wiser than I might be capable of. But I gathered her in my arms, my mouth against her neck as she passed, exhaustedly, into sleep.

I followed sometime later, wondering whether I was going to survive this.


	8. Chapter 8 Elsewheres

**Thursday, March 16**_**: Clallam County Hospital, Forks, WA**_

I sat in the darkness of the charge nurse's office for a long time after hanging up with Bella, seeing but not reading the abstract collage of memos and health notices on the bulletin board above my head. Harry had slipped into a coma sometime in the early afternoon, his every breath now created by a machine.

To tell the truth, I was hiding. I wasn't good at living – the path of my life post-Renee proving that point with resolve – and I was even worse with good-byes. Harry and I had travelled a long road together since the day I pulled onto the shoulder of the 101 to help a guy with a flat tire the year Renee left. There had been good years: the births of Seth and Jacob, summers with Bella until she wouldn't see me anymore without the chaperone of Mickey Mouse and a thousand cases of Bud (Bud _Lite_ as we started to age) between Forks and Lake Pleasant. We had survived a lot, too. I knew Harry hadn't been taking care of himself as well as he should have, but it seemed impossible to believe that the ashen faced man on life support down the hall was the same man.

A man whose kids had meant everything to him and who had yet been in to see him. I couldn't help but see the correlations to my life, wondering if Bella hadn't moved back to Forks last winter whether we would have any kind of relationship at all. It had shaken me to the foundation when she had left for Phoenix a year ago. I didn't think much of the boy, but if it hadn't been for Carlisle…

_Mono_, I recalled, my attempts at humor earlier with Bells not having been far from the mark. _Sue said they both had mono._ There certainly was something going on in La Push. First Jake, then the Clearwaters and by the looks of him, Sam Uley was thick in the trigger hairs. I wouldn't be surprised if they were _still _avoiding the hospital at Forks because of their distrust of Dr Cullen, although God knew the place had suffered with his relocation to Los Angeles. _Isn't mono the kissing disease?_ I thought, uneasily. Nothing in the world could make me ask Bella about the situation with Jake. But I made a mental note to schedule a fishing trip with Billy. Soon. _Just to compare notes_. Billy understood the subterfuge involved with daughters, something I was learning.

_Daughters_. Billy wanted his to go to college and was heartbroken when Rebecca married the Samoan, lucky to get a phone call from Rachel once a term. I had Bella, who I would give my right leg to get to know. And Harry had Leah, who had been on the outs with Harry for over a year – something he had mulled over with us while fishing and a couple of Buds under the belt. It had something to do with Sam Uley, whose side Harry had seemed to favor. I didn't agree with Harry – after all, I had a rifle with Cullen's name on it hanging on the wall – but couldn't forget the kindness Uley had done me when Bells had been lost in the wood around Forks. "_He couldn't help it_," Harry – and Billy after a while – had insisted time and time again. Finally changing the topic with their catch all, "_It's just the way things are in La Push, Charlie_."

I liked Jake just fine, almost like a son most days, but hoped that _that _peculiarity didn't out in him. Not if Bells was involved. I would hate to have to shoot him, too.

When I could no longer stand the sound of my own thoughts, I rejoined the general population – stopping at the vending machine for the tea I had promised Sue before taking Bella's call. Cream, no sugar. I had a little under an hour until I was on call for the night. It was the last double of the week while my deputy on nights took advantage of Spring Break with the family.

Sue was alone, outside of Harry's room, staring into the dark pane of Plexiglas that pretended at a proper window looking into the courtyard beyond. As always the thought struck me, _now that's a proper looking woman_, always inappropriate and always there, like the tattoo Renee had left on my heart or my gun. She was a tall woman with skin the color of weak tea, long straight black hair falling without adornment to the small of her back. She made jewelry that was sold around the world now, and I had sometimes bought pieces for Bella when I remembered that small girls liked gifts. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen Bella wear jewelry and wondered where Sue's handiworks were now – probably in some long forgotten box in Phoenix. _So many wasted years_.

"Cream, no sugar," I announced, the heavily waxed floor squeaking my arrival a second before she looked up.

"Oh, _Charlie_," my name came down with the weight on her shoulders, exhaled almost in relief, taking my offering gratefully.

"Did you think I would forget?" I asked, arching a brow that teased the ghost of a smile from her. I had only managed to slosh an inch of the stuff on myself – a good showing, actually – and when she noticed it tried to use a handful of left over fast food napkins to clean me up. "It's a lost cause, I think." But I let her try. She needed something to do with her hands, something to focus on that wasn't in the room beyond.

"Did you reach Bella?" She asked, genuinely interested. Sue had been invaluable when I had scrambled to rearrange my bachelorhood to accommodate Bells.

"Yeah. Apparently Jake had to fish her out of the Pacific," I laughed, the sound rising on a grimace and she smiled again, although it didn't reach her eyes. "It's a shame she got that half of me. Good thing Jake's got good reflexes." I noticed the Styrofoam cup of coffee, still steaming, on a nearby table – a new bag of fast food. "Sam?" I asked, making the connections in a flash.

"Yes," she said, her expression unreadable, "and… Seth." _But no Leah_, I found myself noticing.

"Poor kid, I hope he's feeling better. I'm glad he came in see his Dad. Harry would like that." Sue agreed nonverbally, the ding of the elevator announcing Seth and Sam's arrival.

Two things struck me as I watched the two move, almost warily, from the elevator bay. Firstly, Seth looked like hell warmed over – dark circles under his eyes and bone tired. I didn't realize how strong he was either as he took my proffered hand, pumping it with a force that I hadn't remembered. "They grow up fast," I quipped, not entirely joking as both Sam and Seth – who couldn't be more than thirteen - were over six feet. "I don't think Forks stands a chance against La Push this year." Seth's smile was almost haunted, an afterthought and Sam's was less genuine. "But it looks like you're in capable hands, Sue." I bid her farewell, made sure she had the cell (and made a mental note to actually carry it with me) number in case she needed anything and promised to pop in later.

Secondly, as I walked away, I thought that it was strange that both Sam and Seth smelled of pine resin – a clean, good smell that one didn't find outside of campers.

I mulled over that thought until I walked into Alice Cullen.

**Wednesday, March 15:**_** Denali National Park, Alaska**_

It was snowing on Mount McKinley, hesitant flakes turning into a flurry as I stood on the summit. The clouds overhead were dark and pregnant with precipitation – the beginnings of what would be a wicked storm for the area north of Denali. I liked the electric feel of the atmosphere, a warning that would have raised the small hairs on the back of the neck. _Had I been human_.

I was completely alone. And I had to think.

I could still taste the afterimages of the vision – rather _visions_ – in excruciating, perfect recall. The edges of my perception frayed after the strength of the most recent one, the result of the haloed lights that blew all my visual resources every time I experienced one. I likened it most closely to experiencing a migraine – if a migraine could sear an image on my brain with exacting clarity. I didn't know many humans, let alone one who experienced the phenomena, but if I ever did I would ask about the heightened smell, the orbs of light.

I_ did_ know one human very well, however.

Bella Swan. My preordained best friend and someone I was not supposed to be envisioning. She was, however, the reason I was on the top of Mount McKinley with a storm breaking around me, more unsure than I had been in decades.

The figure jumping off the cliff – somewhere around the Olympic Peninsula by the topography of the image – had been in burned relief against the exactitude of the background. A starring spot reserved for one small, foolish human girl – who, incidentally, meant the world to me – hinged on a decision. _Would she or wouldn't she?_

I wasn't supposed to be thinking about her at all. _Hadn't that been the decision?_ Not her name, not her face and _certainly_ not the way she furrowed her brow while deciding whether to trust me or not. She always did, of course, but the moment before she accepted the inevitable was the best part, adorably unnecessary but so perfectly Bella. And I was _definitely_ not supposed to be thinking about that. Doctor's orders.

But I did. And the vision had ripped through my skull with the force of a tornado – pulling up all the 'Don't Cross' tape Edward had mentally erected in the process, knocking out windows and doors and leaving me making snow monsters in ten foot drifts in the middle of nowhere.

Sometimes, when I am especially cross with Edward, I envision his opening salvo of: _Everything started with Jasper.._. And I would interject that he was right: the earth, the sun, the first birdsong of the morning were because of Jasper Whitlock. And then I would tell him to get out of my head if he wasn't going to accept that we were no more or less than we were. Not all of us have the willpower of aesthetes. Someday he will sit on the hard crust of snow outside of Denali and tell me his theory, but not yet. Not for a while yet.

As I happen to love Jasper more than anything, I accepted our shared penance in good faith… in the beginning. But I _missed_ Bella Swan. No one could understand the loneliness I had endured for so long. Jasper could taste my emotions, the family could hear my words – but the darkness of being alone, of being a monster without a past had taught me the value of the promises the future made me. The promises I dreamed about and lived through before they happened. The day I would meet Jasper Whitlock. The family that was waiting for me. The vision of Bella and I as true sisters. I _wanted_ that, I still did.

So I began to cheat.

I started out small. Just a little peek into her life – the life we had left to her – to satisfy my craving. I saw her in the lurid lights of a bar in Port Angeles, Jessica Stanley's angry face from a distance, while she paused in the middle of the street, trying to decide which way to go.

_Bella, stop this right now!_ I thought, willing my words to reach the Bella that _would_.

Edward and I had had our first fight about her that night, inching closer to Denali. _As if we _never_ were_, he had reminded me. I called him an _eavesdropper_, accusing him of _wanting me to look so he could see_. Not our finest moment, but one blanketed by the inaccessibility of our minds. Or rather his mind. It must be nice to be able to get what you want without giving anything in return.

The second time I attempted it, I was in the New York City Hall of Records, paging through rat droppings and water damaged birth records. My favorite phantom coursing past a dark tree line with a speed alien to her, brown hair a banner in her fuzzy wake. The image, so like a film reel, cut into sunshine as she looked behind her, lips forming words I couldn't read. _This is reckless and childish and idiotic, Bella_, I said into the damp coolness of the basement wishing my voice could cut through the distance. I expected it then, in the rambling farmhouse in Ithaca where he reminded me: _You promised, Alice_. It was hard to imagine the comfort with which the perpetual lines of his teenage face wore angst, but it did. He fled us, fled New York – hell, the continent. _Coward_.

"_He's not running from us_," Jasper said later, sagely, a thousand apologies in his dark eyes that I dismissed individually with tongue and teeth and hands. "_He's running from choice_." Hers, his, ours. But always hers – usurping her rights so he could never be fully opened. The logic was flawed – immortality did not grant omniscience, which we forgot sometimes – but he was as much a product of his time as I was of mine. We could wrap ourselves in fancy cars, the latest clothes – but beneath the wrapper we were still antiques whose precepts, whose _tabula rosa_ had been filled up for decades before Bella Swan even came into the world.

As the pall of Edward's leaving lay over us, I tried to stop looking. Instead I saw images of streets tight with bodies, heat like a net of perspiration on the back of the neck. He was in South America: hunting, hiding and trying to survive his choices.

While I made mine in an early February shower that ran cold before Jasper found me coated in the wet powder of tiles I had cracked with my fist. The images were out of focus and suffused with light until I couldn't see anything at all, but I felt her unease as if it used my body. _Don't move_, I cautioned – knowing that fear.

And then there was nothing. A sunlit emptiness that was anathema to me, achingly sweet and yet increasingly painful. _This is not your world_, the aurora said more clearly than anything could. _You've abdicated your place here_.

Carlisle was completely understanding of my breeches in the status quo, while I couldn't adequately voice my growing anger at the promised gift that had been taken from me. "_You should go to Denali_," he'd suggested. "_To clear your mind_." And as a late Winter dissolved around me – the northern roads impassable for the season – I tried to forget. Tried to _clear my head_.

Until the sunlit veil surrounding Bella faded for a moment and I saw her jump. Her _her_. No shadows, no maybes.

To explain:

It was like one of those moments in the movies where the heroine – in an impeccably tailored peignoir and hair that dared something as insignificant as a pillow to touch it – woke up in a cold sweat, the effects of a dream so bad that the camera came in for a close-up.

Exactly like that, _except_ for the sleeping (a necessary component for dreaming), the cold sweats (requiring a functioning thermoregulation system) and the fact that the only one looking through a camera lens was me. The peignoir was vintage Vanity Fair.

I had been so still, so long on top of the mountain that the drift anchored me to the summit and created a mirror mask of hard, glittery snow against my skin. But I had already made my decision. I knew that before I even came up here.

Somewhere there was a small, foolish human girl who had only a finite lifetime.

And she was my promised best friend and I wasn't going to let her die.

**Thursday, March 16: Clallam County Hospital, Forks, WA **

Clallam County Hospital was neutral ground, a parking lot and highway between Cullen lands and treaty lands beyond that.

Knowing this didn't stop the turning of my stomach as the stench of something sweet with rot braved the cold rain with a bravura that spoke of proximity. _It was close_. Sam and I turned towards it in an identical movement that brought to mind the Animal Planet's lemurs: watching the flowerless ornamental shrubs give up the dark shape beyond. Sam put a hand on my shoulder and it vibrated with the force of the fury that ripped through me. _Did the blood-suckers have no shame?_

"It's not Victoria," his voice was low, meant for only my ears. I don't think this made any difference whatsoever as every molecule of my body was focused on _Vampire_, adrenaline rushing into my arms and legs as I started to shake. "_Control_," Sam said in a voice that speared me to the spot, his dark eyes catching mine, his chest moving in time with my breaths.

"Of course I'm not Victoria," the voice was clear and melodic, something that would have awed me where I stood… if she didn't smell so damn bad. Coming under the exterior lights of the hospital front, the woman was very small, dark haired and lithe. Her heels clicked on the patio bricks, an umbrella shielding her from the rain and giving her an aura of humanity that would have fooled anyone else. "Although I'm curious as to why you know that name." She was very attractive, although it was marred slightly by the face she made as soon as she smelled us. "God, you _stink_."

"You're no rose bed yourself, Cullen," Sam's voice was iron.

"Of course not. I'm their Alice," she responded, probably smiling behind the small hand she brought to cover her nose. "And you're… I'm not sure what you are… but something akin to the Quileute dogs, I'd guess. Although I thought that was a legend. Apparently not. I thought you might… I don't know… hairier?"

For a moment I saw red – livid, blinding red – as my flesh rippled around me. "_Control_," Sam repeated, the alpha tone the only thing to break through my shift-shiver. "Don't come any closer if you value the treaty, Alice Cullen." Sam warned her.

"I won't be the one breaking it," she replied, looking directly at me. "I'm civilized enough not to need a leash. You might want to rein that one in as I pass," she pointed at me with a bone white finger. "A friend of mine is inside. And the hospital is still neutral territory." Sam's arms were steel around my shoulders as she came closer, almost dancing as she passed us. There was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction of phasing right in front of her, although I'm sure I broke the path beneath me with my shaking.

She paused at the doors, swinging open to admit her although I thought for a second that her lack of a soul might have stopped the electronics from registering her. "Later, wolves. We'll discuss this Victoria you seem to have been expecting. I think you know where to find me."

It took me some time to calm down enough to walk past her waiting in the lobby, casually flipping through an outdated copy of Good Housekeeping.

She had the audacity to wave at us as we entered the elevator for my Dad's floor.

_God, I hate leeches_.

**Friday, March 17: **_**Swan Residence, Forks, WA**_

It was almost too easy to slip into the girl's room through the West facing window - the cover of overgrown buckthorn bushes shielded anything from the road and the ancient spruce stretched to the eaves of the roof.

_Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest._

The window opened without complaint and I felt something in the hole of my chest as I dropped noiselessly onto the streetlight traced flooring within. For long moments I analyzed it, measuring the room in my head and then going into the hallway - opening doors and testing, calculating.

I found I was actually disappointed.

Seeking, following, taking the boy had been more challenging than finding the dwelling of Cullen's mate.

And there was no mistaking the scent of her in the rooms I passed through - stronger in the bedroom and bathroom. I knew it almost as well as I knew my own. There was also a male. Stronger than the girl's, thicker throughout the house. Older. _A guardian, perhaps?_

This piqued my interest.

There were wolf notes throughout the house, thicker around the periphery, among the buckthorn where I had waited for some time, but also in the girl's room. I had heard tales of the Children of the Moon from James, but had never seen one before. In practice, I was disappointed by the gamboling inefficiency of those who lived here. Certainly not worthy of purging save for the novelty of their blood.

They could not track me in water.

They could not take me in single combat.

They were constrained to the places that did not smell of Cullen.

As I prepared the boy's body on the floor of the girl's room, my silver blade keen and quick in the storm darkness of the night, I knew also that Cullen's mate was a weakness to the wolves as well as the Coven.

* * * *

**_A couple of different perspectives: Charlie. Alice. Seth. Victoria. _**

**_Love it? Hate it? Have questions or comments? All reviews are welcome. _**

**_--at5115_**

**_edited 08/18 to fix the dates - I was running a day ahead of schedule.  
_**


	9. Chapter 9 Bella

When I crashed into wakefulness to the sound of Charlie's fist on my door, it immediately became obvious that several salient issues needed to be solved. Firstly, I had managed to misplace every item of clothing on my person. As my memories of how _exactly_ that had happened returned – in excruciating, heated detail – my second issue solved itself and spawned a third. I was in _Jacob's_ room, in La Push… but where was he? There wasn't even an indentation on the pillow beside me although it was warm to the touch.

Charlie again. "Bells, you decent?"

I was sure my erratic heartbeat was loud enough to hear through the door. I had a feeling that answering that question with any sort of answer longer than one syllable was more than anyone was ready to hear. Myself included. "No," my voice actually startled me – more a croak than human speech. I swallowed a couple of times, hoping to salve the rawness with saliva. No such luck. "Give me a second, Ch – er, Dad." I tried to project through the door. Stunning oratory was _not_ in my near future. But where was Jacob? Or more importantly: where were my clothes? It wasn't like Jake's room left a lot of places to hide. The double bed took up most of the available floor space except near the door where a bare foot of space allowed entry to the bed and a tiny closet.

"Billy pulled your clothes out of the dryer. I'll leave them outside the door." Charlie's voice had softened, slightly. Possibly realizing I was in my underwear – the most awkward of situations featuring one's father. "I'll be out… here…" He waited for my quick, 'Ok' before beating a hasty retreat. I knew I had a good ten minutes before he would be back.

I rubbed my eyes, taking stock of the room again. My imagination caught on the closet. The thought of Jacob Black – all 6'5" of him – in a closet that couldn't have been more than five feet at best was unbelievably reassuring, almost endearing. Resonating in the tender, achy places of my body that seemed to remember most intimately the warmth I had needed last night. His warmth. _Is everything going to be ok_? I found myself wondering, _I can't believe I…we… did that_ overlapping with the quick, _Will it happen again?_ I kind of hoped so. But the other part of me, the one that apparently had all the sense of a battered victim, could only offer: _Traitor_.

I told that part to shut up. And for the first time in what felt like several lifetimes, it actually listened. But not before knocking the breath out of my lungs, leaving me gasping in Jacob's bed. _When will this stop?_ I was so tired of this. Of the 395 days I had known and loved Edward Cullen, I had spent almost half of them pining over him. What kind of masochistic relationship did I have with him, anyway? In all the time I had known Jacob, he had only left me hanging once – and that had been because of circumstances beyond his control. _Namely lycanthropy, which in the circumstances was as good an excuse as any_. I smiled, despite my best intentions towards maintaining my present unhappiness, and suddenly really wanted to see Jacob.

I was so sure he was in the closet that while I made an awkward crawl towards the foot of the bed wrapped in Jacob's sheet, I didn't immediately see the end of the bed. Until I made a classic Swan dive: tumbling gracelessly over the edge and into a pile of textbooks that I scattered to the four winds. I paused for a moment, waiting for Jacob's laughter – from my angle he was _not_ under the bed, although my shorts _were_ – and frowned when it never came. "Yes, I _was_ hoping for some audience participation," I said into the quiet of the room, limping slightly as I stood up. Nothing. The tank top was on the inside doorknob, a shot that would have been spectacular under any circumstances. I threw the shirt over my head and then squared off with the closet door, sliding it open to find… a dresser and a couple decades' worth of Jacob Black paraphernalia. But certainly not the devil himself.

I deflated from the top down, as if someone had unplugged me. A lot of reasonable things went through the maelstrom of my head: he heard Charlie, he had a pack meeting, Billy – who I suddenly remembered was home – had needed him for something, he was in the bathroom. And then: _Did I do something wrong?_ Maybe I was too broken for Jacob. He liked to fix things, was incredibly good at it, but maybe I was irreparable. I didn't want to be irreparable.

I cracked the door of Jacob's room, the sound of Charlie and Billy's low voices filtering down the short hallway and grabbed the warm pile of my clothes. They were dry and folded, smelling of fabric softener. Everything was there… except my underwear. I threw them on as quickly as I could, keeping the borrowed boy shorts on under my jeans in the interest of modesty – although I hoped that I was the only one who could smell the sweet, perfumy odor that clung to them.

I was more than happy to replace the oversized tank with my own, however. With calculated defiance, I climbed on Jacob's bed, holding the sill and threw the offending article of clothing out the window. It was open, a good thing considering the room had been a sauna last night, and I watched the tank sail through the early morning air and into some sort of spiky bush.

When I came out into the front room – barefoot, since I had apparently left my tennis shoes and socks up at First Beach and a tangle of hair that would have caused a brush to weep – both Charlie and Billy stopped talking. Charlie offered me a half grin stamped with his opinion of my woeful appearance and "I think there's a comb in the cruiser if you're interested." Both he and Billy laughed.

"Thanks." I managed to stretch the word into a croaky mimic of sarcasm.

"You sound horrible. You _sure_ it's not mono?" Charlie commented. Billy looked away so quickly that I had a feeling that even if I had imagined Jacob last night, Billy had actually seen him. _And possibly me_. _Great_. I decided to play innocent.

"Yeah. I think I swallowed some water yesterday. It didn't help that the window was open all night." I swallowed; grimacing as I did so, sure that the rolling canter of my heart was audible to both of them. "You haven't seen… Jake this morning, have you?" I tried to school my voice to something sounding like casual disinterest.

"I thought you two shared a body these days." Charlie's dry commentary was quiet, and I didn't have to pretend to drop something to cover the blush that burned through me, as I _had_ dropped my button up. _Breathe, Bella_, I forced myself into something resembling composure.

I made eye contact with Billy on my way up. He took pity on me, but not without offering the faintest of eyebrow quirks in kind. "He left earlier this morning. With Sam."

Sam. Sam who had mentioned being with Leah Clearwater. _Leah_, I sighed internally, my eyes narrowing on the name. And then I remembered Harry Clearwater. Charlie's friend who was in the hospital. "Oh," there were so many nuances in that single sound that I think we all went with our own interpretations. "How is Mr. Clearwater doing?"

Charlie sighed and I really looked at him for the first time since waking up, thoughts of Jacob evaporating. He looked far more careworn than normal; a light brown stain bloomed on his white dress shirt. "He's stable." Charlie stood up from the table, moving to rinse out the La Push Wolves mug he'd been using. I noticed the keys to the pick-up on the table, reaching to palm them as Billy folded his tobacco stained hand over my own. I looked up at him, unable to pick up whatever his fathomless brown eyes were trying to get from me. I realized with a start that they were Jacob's eyes, too.

_I think I'm falling in love with your son_. The thought pinned me between the scrutiny of Billy's eyes and the broken Bella who was hissing its unease with the turn of events. I flinched as if it had been spoken between us. He must have found whatever he was looking for, squeezing my hand before releasing me to Charlie. "I'll follow you in the cruiser to the Diner," yes, _the_ Diner – there was only one in Forks.

I waved to Billy, offering him a lopsided smile that I thought might have appeared natural.

***

In the end, Charlie decided that flip-flops did not constitute adequate driving footwear, so I ended up in the cruiser using the passenger side mirror and a comb from the dash attacking the giant snarl of my hair.

We didn't say anything between La Push and Forks, KVAC filling up the cab with late season basketball scores while I braided my hair using a rubber band I'd found in the truck. I remembered that I had a shift at Newton's later in the morning. The mundane seemed like the most exotic of things: a four hour window of normalcy in between vampire stalkers, a brotherhood of wolves, near death experiences and friends who were jumping the fence between relationship definitions. I was looking forward to it.

Charlie was sort of a regular – to be honest, he was _the_ regular - at the Diner. He had tried to work me into the routine my first couple of weeks in Forks, but I had fought it tooth and nail. First off – everyone, I mean _everyone_ in Forks who wasn't in school spent their mornings in the Diner. It just seemed like part of the inertia of the area, the strange machine of routine that had spit out Renee and absorbed Charlie. I gave the place a new found look around while Charlie herded us towards his usual table in the front: the fading red Naugahyde benches, the laminated tabletops, the turn of the century pictures of an Olympic Peninsula that no longer existed. _I almost died yesterday_. _I would never have seen Charlie again or Renee or Jacob. No more red truck or Forks High School. No more Diner._ _No more Bella Swan except for photographs._

"Dad?" Charlie looked up from his menu – a ruse for my sake, he always ordered the same thing – waiting for me to complete the thought. "I'm really sorry about," I kind of awkwardly fluttered my hands around, ironically mimicking Sam Uley from the day before, as if making some large gesture, "… well, _everything_." We had the same eyes – a dark expressive brown that in Charlie's case he had learned to shield. I hoped I conveyed a small portion of what I was apologizing for: Phoenix, the Cullens, Victoria, the four months I had crawled into myself hoping to die. For jumping off the cliff at First Beach yesterday – something he didn't really need to have the particulars on. Maybe even for the motorcycles he couldn't _ever_ know about.

He set the menu down, looking at me almost suspiciously. "You know you can tell me anything, Bells." It was his Chief Swan voice, all business with a thin veneer of consideration. "I know we don't have the sort of relationship that –"

"It's not like that, Char-_Dad_." I was blushing now, taking up my menu as a laminated shield. "It's just… Have you ever thought of taking a vacation away from Forks?"

The look he gave me was priceless – caught somewhere between seriousness and complete surprise. His eyes narrowed and I could almost _hear_ the synapses in his brain firing. "Like Los Angeles, for instance?" _Exactly_, because it was very sunny and I _knew_ the Cullens weren't there. I was actually hurt that he thought I was faking an apology to get something I wanted. I did want something, but my apology was very sincere – even if I couldn't quite spit out the right words.

"I was thinking more like Phoenix." I said, knowing it was one of the sunniest places in the world. Except that James had followed me there. "Or a cruise," he would be safe on a ship, I reasoned. "like Cancun or something."

Charlie was going to say something, but the phone at his waistband chose that moment to interrupt. He frowned – and I thought he was going to ignore it – until he saw the number. "Hold that thought," he ordered before leaving the table to take the call. Leaving me sitting at the table with a plastic glass of ice water and a sinking feeling that we were seriously two ships passing in the night. _Listen Charlie,_ I wanted to say, _there is a vampire assassin after my sorry ass, compliments of Edward Cullen, and you need to get the hell out of Dodge so when _– I knew it was just a matter of time – _she gets through the werewolf bodyguards you don't know about, she doesn't kill you._

_Oh, and can you take Jacob with you, I don't want him to die either._

As if my fears of death had been brought to life, Charlie stumbled back into the Diner looking as if someone – anyone, really – had just walked over his grave. It scared me so badly that I spilled my ice water over the table and onto the floor, ice cubes plinking and skating across the yellowing linoleum.

"I'm sorry, Bells," he focused on me, although he wasn't really seeing me. "I have to go up to the hospital – and I guess you're coming, too." I stood up really fast, throwing down a couple of napkins on the spill beneath my feet.

"What--?"

"It's Harry Clearwater. He didn't make it."


	10. Chapter 10 Jacob

**_Super hot off the press. The plot thickens..._**

I could smell Jared through the open window of my room before the V6 of his rusty Chevy Caprice had had time to chink down from its perpetual state of overheating. Two doors and an elbow to the trunk to coax it into opening that would have permanently dented a lesser vehicle. _Jared and _Dad.

I knew a page when one came_. _And a physical representative of the pack showing up on my doorstep in the small hours of the morning was directly related to my complete disregard for the summons four hours previously. And probably the one four hours prior to that. I had been pushing my luck – something I seemed to have an aptitude for of late – and knew that payback for the pushing was going to completely suck. Babysitting of the non-Swan variety. Double leech duty. Pair-bonding with Paul's wolf mind - which seriously needed to move beyond the recycled images of his _single_ backseat encounter with "the girl from Neah Bay" just before Christmas. With minor creative interpretations – I preferred to think of it as _flair_ - I _had _followed Sam's dictates to the letter of the law. Bella was home (_my_ home), I was with her (no way a leech could get between our bodies at the moment) and we weren't in trouble. _Yet._

That it was Jared who was approaching said something in and of itself. Not Paul, who would have jumped through the window as a wolf and tried to rip out my jugular – like _that_ was going to happen – as the self-appointed arm of Sam's law enforcement. Nor was it Embry, who would have stood outside the door for an hour agonizing whether to bother me or not once he caught Bells' scent. Jared was the political wildcard in the pack and thus Sam's Beta. There was a good chance I wasn't going to have to defend myself bodily, but he wasn't going to be a push over.

Of course, all things considered, admitting that I wasn't keen on seeing Jared was an understatement of epic proportions.

The last thing – the _absolute_ last thing – I wanted to do on the Friday morning I woke up in Bella Swan's arms, one smooth thigh wedged high between my legs, was get out of bed. I knew exactly where I was and how I'd got there. While I could count on Bells to do something stupid – usually with panache – I couldn't count on the end effect being as spectacular as last night. But like most of the last month, what I wanted had little to no bearing on what I did.

I could still taste her on my tongue.

I had no natural defenses when it came to Bella Swan.

One thing led to another after I allowed myself to remember her taste – my first mistake of the day – burrowing my face in the streamers of dark hair that fell over my left arm. There were no strawberries to be found under the smell of Head and Shoulders and soap but it was evocative in the way she always was to me. My right hand traced the curve of her hip, lingered a moment on the jut of the bone beneath the flesh before following the skin into the velvet pelt at her sex. She was molten and instinctually opened her legs to accommodate my hand. I wanted her viscerally, my entire body going taut as I realized that I only had to unfurl my hand to be inside her.

Outside, Dad and Jared were discussing the Clearwaters in muted, slurry words that I could hear with absolute clarity, gauging my time in minutes. I had tinkered with the chair a couple of times and knew the idiosyncrasies of the way it moved, which is to say not particularly well over the gravel I'd laid down so I wouldn't have to cut the grass twice a week. My heart and respiration had hitched in joining this particular race. _I am going to walk away from this unscathed_, I told myself. _The good monster_.

And then she moved against my hand, the casual flick of my thumb running along the dewed cleft of her sex almost as an afterthought, the short nail catching in the ruched slickness there. I groaned, if the sound that came from my breathless lungs could be called a groan. _Two minutes_.

I was quivering, but it was nothing like the shift-shiver of phasing. Unless this was a separate phasing, where I became the willing tool of Bella Swan's release.

I filled her wet aperture with the third finger of my hand, swallowed to my second knuckle by her ferocious heat – although I was warmer. Countering her movements with my own, she tightened: breasts furling, eyes clamping as her body taught me how to pleasure her. Half-conscious, her movements were easy and sinuous, her lips opening as she gasped for air. I heard the key in the front door, a shuffle as Jared tried to work the tiny thing in his large hands. _A minute._

Her pelvis angled, brushing her clitoris against the line of my thumb. The effect was instantaneous: a dark blush bloomed on her chest and her body tightened around my finger. I was close to combustion, the cock pinned against her leg moving against the wash worn material of my shorts. Despite my best intentions, Wanting Jake knew that if Jared and Dad weren't crossing the metallic runner that held the entryway lino flush against the orange nap of the front room carpeting, I would have been inside her. I _could_ burn Cullen from her. She _would_ call out my name as I exorcised every inch of her body.

Unfortunately, I was running out of time.

"_Wakey, wakey Jakey_," Jared's voice beat him to the door of my room, rising at the end as if asking a question, penetrating the thin composite of the door that had replaced the one I pulverized the night I first phased.

I slid out of Bells reverently, unwillingly – leaving her and I hopelessly unsatisfied. "_I'm sorry_," I whispered against her lips, where I kissed away her sleepy frown. "_I have to go_." I heard Jared at the door, having willfully ignored his familiar sounds until, well, as long as I could. Bells said something that sounded like "_Don't go,"_ the clarity of the words fuzzed against my bicep as she melted into the crook of my arm, sighing. It was almost funny – _almost_ – that she was only really honest when she wasn't coherent enough to make up barriers. And she was spectacularly good at making up barriers. "Coming," my voice was low and deep and just loud enough to carry to the other side of the door. I didn't trust Jared to be as politic as Dad, who had probably recognized Bella's truck. _And the lack of a body on the couch_.

I peeled Bells off me with as much delicacy as I could muster, sneaking the briefest of looks over her slender form buried in the ancient coiled tributaries of my mattress. There wasn't a lot of room to maneuver around in the double that pretty much took up the width of the room, but I managed to anchor myself with the window sill, opening the window without mechanical complaint. It wasn't the first time I'd had to use it. It was narrower than I remembered and I almost took out the molding with my shoulders.

I dropped, barefoot and in my black cut off shorts, about an inch short of what had once been a thriving flower garden – pulverizing last year's wild flowers and sinking an inch into the softer dirt. I had a feeling my days utilizing the hatch were numbered. Sort of like my chances with Bells if I didn't get to Jared before he opened the door to my room. I came through the front door with all the finesse of a bull elephant – the tremor of complete sexual frustration adding to the effect nicely - collecting Jared's double take between the room and my abrupt entrance.

"Curious," Jared announced in the way he had of sometimes vocalizing his thoughts. If it was a wolf-mind carryover like I suspected it was I hoped it wasn't catching.

I arched a brow, daring him to follow that train of thought and his hand twitched on the doorknob. Teasing. "You smell like Vam–"he paused, clearly going to finish with something else and settled on,"… girl." Releasing the knob, he held up both hands – his arm span enough to fill the hallway – as if surrendering. "I don't want to know. Seriously. I'm going to have to relive the last night of your maidenhood in epic detail for the rest of my life anyway. I will be scarred for life. I'd like to maintain my innocence for a few moments longer."

I actually blushed. Of course, the second I phased, Bells was out of the bag anyway.

Fifteen minutes more of solitary enjoyment would have to be enough. And the promise of a lifetime of pain for anyone idiot enough to reveal anything to Bells. The thought of sharing the substance of last night with anyone – let alone Paul who had a talent for weaknesses, in particular the finding of – made me physically nauseous. But again pack perception came into play: the premise of privacy was just as good as _real_ privacy. 4 out of 5 wolves agree.

I followed Jared back into the small kitchen where Dad was fiddling with the coffeemaker. "You had a late night," I remarked, taking in the dark gullies that had formed under his eyes. Although I would never say so, I always had an eye on him ever since diabetes had traded his legs for 20" hollow rims. He had stared down numerous frightened, confused werewolves at less than eye level - he was probably unshakable - but he was still my Dad.

"There's a '53 Chevy in my driveway." Not a hint of recrimination lingered in his matter of fact words. Dad was good like that. But I did detect the slightest bit of unease and had a pretty good idea it was directly related to the girl in my bed. The warm, incredibly sexy, _naked_ girl in my bed. Who happened to be the only daughter of one of Dad's oldest friends. Who happened to be the Chief of Police of Forks.

"Actually, it's an '81 Caprice," Jared offered completely deadpan. The corner of his mouth twitched. "Although I imagine it's hard to tell the difference from your, um, unique perspective." His instinctive jump backward was all that stopped him from falling under Billy's wheels. Something of the tension in my shoulders running out with Jared's backing.

"Obviously your good sense didn't catch up with your size, Tageant," Dad moved back to the counter, pulling down a mug. I could tell he was pretty pleased with himself for _almost_ catching Jared. "Just pointing out to any interested parties that Charlie _does_ know how to use his gun."

I shrugged, an easy gesture that rippled the muscles of my shoulders. I had forgotten to pick up a shirt and nothing would make me go back into my room to get one. Not for the first time I cursed my laundry efficiency – nothing in the wash. "Chief Swan has nothing to worry about from me. Besides," I added, "I can run really, really fast." I gave Jared a sidelong glance. "Obviously faster than Jared."

I proved it a second later.

***

Jared filled me in over a scratchy Celine Dion tape that I _hoped_ wasn't his in the Caprice's cobbled together tape deck.

Seth _and_ Leah Clearwater were now and forevermore members of the La Push pack. _A girl_, I thought to myself. _And not just any girl – but Leah Clearwater_. Although I knew her, I didn't _know_ her very well. But I had been privy to Sam's thoughts long enough to know her through the lens of his mind. He thought she was intelligent, beautiful, stubborn and ferociously faithful. If I had been as smart as Embry – from whose mind I had stolen the idea – I would have realized that Sam was still in love with her. We also knew that when he imprinted on Emily Young, breaking every promise he had ever made to Leah, he had cut her to the quick: breaking her without conscious intent.

Although I was no philosopher, I thought Leah had a lot in common with Bells. Except for the breaking without conscious intent. _Cullen knew _exactly _what he was doing when he left, _I reminded myself. _Never forget that._

"And Quilly is close. Quil Senior thinks he'll burst any day now." Jared cranked the wheel as we skated towards the Clearwaters, the only ones on the road. I missed Quil – one of my best friends in the world – like nothing, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. A lifetime sentence. "I think our only break is that Paul and I caught a fresh trail late last night heading Northeast – towards Canada. We lost it at Dungeness – but it didn't come back around, we circled to Neah Bay and back. And there are seven – almost eight – of us now." Jared slowed at the only traffic light in La Push. A blinking red. He was cautious like that.

"There's one other thing." The light hairs at the nape of my neck rose at his tone. A warning. "We may have to be more careful in our rotations."

"Because of the newbies, yeah," I thought I was finishing his thoughts. The reason was obvious.

"Not exactly, no." Jared was still stopped at the blinking red. I turned to face him. "Boundary issues. One of the girl Cullens is back."

The door of the Caprice croaked in my wake as the dark ribbon that had been Jacob Black became an animal, lost in the woods along the 110. _Not now, not now_, my thoughts were as feral as my body.

_Mine, mine, mine, mine…_

***

**Thursday, March 17: **_**Clallam County Hospital, Forks, WA**_

I felt like an old man in the elevator.

Of course, I'd felt like an old man for most of my life so I knew how to shift the weight of the world enough so that I could deal with it. My parents, Renee, Bells and now the Clearwaters. The tea stain on my shirt was cooling and I tried to remember if I had another shirt in my locker at the station. I fumbled with the stiff foil of the stain wipe Sue had found in the bottom of her purse.

To say I was surprised when I recognized the dark corona of Alice Cullen's hair in the hospital lobby would be an understatement. I think I short circuited for a second, the garish fluorescents overhead giving her an unreal quality that was both more and less than human. My instincts were to walk away from her – that she posed some sort of danger to me. _Which is patently ridiculous, as Alice Cullen was as harmless as they came_. _To me_. Now Bells…that was an entirely different story.

She saw me before my body could decide whether to stay or go, casually discarding the magazine she had been reading and waving towards me with one white arm. I decided I _was_ happy to see her, although I was also uneasy. _Why is she back?_ I put on my game face, offering her a practiced smile that seemed to pass muster.

"Charlie!" Her hands were very cool to the touch, reminding me that it was only Mid-March and she was only wearing a thin black rain jacket. Obviously, Los Angeles had already erased her Washington State survival skills. The oversight reminded me of Bells and my smile became more genuine. "I heard you were in the hospital and thought I would wait for you."

"Did you?" My eyebrow arched of its own volition. Behind me, I could make out the flutter of conversation as the information desk behind me speculated on the reappearance of Alice Cullen. Not unbiased speculation, however, focused as it was on the hopeful reappearance of Carlisle. I fiddled with the stain wipe, not quite breaching the exterior while my eyes were on Alice.

"Yes. No one was home when I stopped by to see Bella." Her words were bright and even and it struck me that despite her patina of age, Alice was still just a teenager. A teenager who would think nothing of 'stopping by' the house of the girl she had abandoned – without a phone call or letter – over six months ago. And expect to be welcomed back with open arms. _How careless people are with our hearts_. The carelessness of her words made me unreasonably angry for Bells, something of that must have shown on my face as her mouth dropped at the corner. "But you're not happy to see me, are you Charlie?"

"In a matter of speaking, no. Your brother's not with you is he?" I could see over her shoulder and into the lobby beyond her. There was no one else there.

"No. He's still in Los Angeles."

_Bite the bullet, Charlie_. "Why _are_ you back, Alice?"

"I was Upstate for Spring Break and I just had this feeling that Bella was in some trouble." Her voice dropped an octave as she took my hand almost conspiratorially. "She's not in the hospital is she?"

"No," I said, wanting but not _quite_ believing her. "Not anymore." I added the last bit and then felt incredibly childish. Not everyone was as mature at seventeen as Bells and I were. _Renee for instance_. Alice gripped my hand very hard, almost too hard, and I flinched before she disengaged.

"I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm so sorry." She sounded miserable, wretched even. "Edward… we… thought it would be best if we didn't talk to her when we left. Better for all of us. But I didn't think she would try to jump off a cliff…"

I was completely surprised. Alarmed, even. "Alice, what are you talking about?" Her elfin face looked up at me, the smell of something sweet blossoming on her skin, a familiar perfume.

"Bella jumped off a cliff today. _Didn't she_…?" She was floundering, almost as if something was unraveling from her essential being. Her dark eyes were questioning, genuinely surprised by my reaction.

"Uh… _no_. I just talked to her an hour ago. She's with Jake. She's fine." And I knew it then, the redundancy of using Jacob's name and the word fine in the same sentence. Bells _was_ fine with Jacob. "Are you alright?" I helped Alice into a nearby chair, one of the attendants behind us running for a cup of water. As she shifted, I noticed a small brown dot on the pristine white of her collared shirt.

"I… I really miss her, Charlie." Something in the tone, the quality of Alice's words brought back memories for me. Dark, desperate memories of having said the same thing in the unnatural coolness of my parent's sickroom. I knew that place, had been there and returned. I sighed, taking the cup of water from the attendant on Alice's behalf and sitting next to her.

"I… I don't know if coming back now was a good idea. When he – when _you_ left – she was... it was really bad. No one knew what to do with her, I took her to specialists and was going to send her to Jacksonville – if she hadn't fought against that." I felt like I had to make her believe something intrinsic, something integral to everything. "And now with Jake, she's stronger than ever. He's a good kid… hell, the best. And I can't lose her again. Not again." I was more than a little embarrassed by my admission – but I had to let her know that there was no way I was letting them hurt Bells again. I had been the worst sort of father for the past seventeen years and I had a lot of time to make up for.

Alice was pensive, taking tentative sips of the heavily processed water. "You're not going to tell her I was here, are you?"

"No." I didn't have to think to answer the question. "But here," it was a clumsy offering – as I peeled open the foil of the stain wipe, freeing the chemical soaked square of fabric. "This," I motioned to my shirt, "is a hopeless case. But it seems to have been meant for you anyway." I motioned to her collar, her mouth turning down in a frown as she saw the stain on her lapel.

"This completely sucks," she wasn't talking about her stain, although went at it with some vigor. "But I can accept your position. I know you won't tell her… but I hope you know that I love her. Love her like a sister."

"I don't doubt it. Not for a second." And I was honest. Sometimes our family had the ability to hurt us the most, without thought, without trying.

"I have to get back soon. They don't know I came down here." She seemed to give up on the stain and I took the wipe back and the forsaken water cup for the trash. She pulled something out of her pocket, a small enameled case that she clicked open to reveal a thin pen and some writing paper. She wrote down enough digits for a phone number and ripped the sheet off the pad. "If… if you ever change your mind or Bella _wants_ to talk to me. Could you keep this just in case?" I never changed my mind, but I was willing to take it.

"Sure," I tucked the paper into the breast pocket of my shirt, making a show of buttoning the flap securely over it.

"Thanks Charlie." And then she hugged me. She only came to my throat, but she must have hit my solar plexus just right, knocking the air out of my lungs before she pulled back.

The last thing I saw of her was the black nylon umbrella she had stored at the door, a little wave as the storm swallowed her bright form whole. I had to get to the Station before a missing persons report was filed on my behalf. I tossed the cup and stain wipe in the open trashcan near the lobby doors, watching the small piece of material float on top of discarded newspapers and a sea of tissues.

And it struck me that the stain on her lapel had looked like blood. A perfect droplet of blood.


	11. Chapter 11 Bella

Charlie and I said nothing in the Cruiser all the way across town, letting the hot air vents and my empty stomach make all the noise we needed.

I didn't know what to say to him.

What could I offer that didn't sound insignificant or canned? _I'm really sorry about Harry_ seemed insufficient and neither of us went in much for platitudes. But just sitting there, catching Charlie's grief secondhand didn't seem right either. I was so distant from him, so alienated from everyone, and being with Jacob – who was so _there_, so involved - made me want some sort connection with another person. A connection with Jake was dangerous, though. _I just barely survived the Cullens. I think Jake could finish me_.

So, while we were stopped at a red light, I put my hand over Charlie's on the stick shift. My way of saying,_ I love you, Charlie_. I felt incredibly vulnerable – more so than I had ever been in a household of vampires – and felt foolish for the long moment it took for the action to register with him, the engine cycling around us. My heart was in my throat. This was my _Father_, but did I know him at all? I mean, I knew all the things about him Renee had recycled over the long years since she left Forks. That he was emotionally distant. That he was stubborn. That he was faithful. Things that were never-changing, consistent, that _were_. And in my life, I had never questioned the tenets that defined him to me. But... he was more than the sum of his parts, more of a person than just 'Dad.' How could I believe I knew him in 32 weeks of visitations? I had never even given him a chance. _I don't even trust him with his own life._

He exhaled once, a long ragged breath. And then turned his hand to squeeze mine. His palms were rough and calloused, crinkled with age and strong. _I love you too, Bells._

"Dad," I took a deep breath myself, suddenly finding that I had reached a calm in the two tides I had been floundering between. Maybe I was stronger than I gave myself credit for. "When this is over – when… _after_ Harry… I have something I need to tell you."

"You're not pregnant are you?" _Yeah, back to post-Phoenix Charlie_.

"No. It's sort of more complicated than that," he looked like he was going to ask something else, carry his pregnancy line of interrogation to the next level. So I added, "It sort of has to do with the Cullens."

He turned into the parking lot of Clallam County Hospital, tapping some erratic melody on the steering wheel. He wasn't looking at me, but that was the way he was in the car. The way _I_ was. It was much easier to talk to someone who wasn't staring you down to the depths of your soul. I knew that from experience. "You… we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"But I want to. I want to tell you." And it was the truth. Probably not all of it, I didn't own the whole story enough to share everything. But enough. I added, "I promise there's nothing about pregnancies or teenage marriage."

Charlie cut the engine, the sound of the light drizzle last night's storm had devolved into surrounding the car. "Are you going to explain what happened in Phoenix? What _really_ happened in Phoenix?" He still wasn't making eye-contact.

"Yes." _With creative editing_. "But…" he was waiting for the caveat, the strings. "But you have to promise not to tell Renee. I don't think… I _know_… she can't handle it." He didn't immediately respond, but I knew that he was thinking about it. Processing.

"There's an umbrella in the glove box," he offered, opening the driver's side door and slipping out of the vehicle. He stopped in the motion of shutting the door, his body filling up the doorway while I retrieved the umbrella in the glove compartment, a few stray gum wrappers escaping. "Isabella. I know I haven't always been there for you. And there are… there are _a lot_ of things I don't want you to tell me. But I want you to know…" he sighed, dredging up the words. "I want you to know that I will listen to everything you want to tell me. Everything."

***

I went back and forth between a granola bar and blueberry pop tarts, my eyes trailing over the candy bars and chips that passed for breakfast in the waiting room vending machines. I didn't care for blueberries, not really, but the thought of mealy granola – shelf life unknown – was equally as unappetizing. I only had a handful of change liberated from the bottom of my empty wallet as the remainder of my worldly wealth was held hostage at Forks National and my checkbook. Just enough for one item. _There are two pop tarts in the package. Quantity over quality._

The morning that I woke up in Jacob's bed and Harry Clearwater died – sort of a mixed bag - wasn't shaping into one of my finer days. I couldn't help but feel like my life was some sort of cosmic game, probably dominos, and everything was falling down around me in a pattern that I wasn't party to. It reminded me of the four beta tapes Charlie owned – his only concession to pre-recorded entertainment – featuring some British guy connecting sewing needles and the atomic bomb. Usually making these seemingly random connections in the 1970s concession to cosmopolitan Safari-ware. I wasn't quite sure how I had gone from Bella A to Bella B, but my spectacular inability to successfully navigate in Earth's gravity wasn't helping anything.

Connections… it all begins with the decision to jump yesterday. An innocent pair of size 6 Converse All-Stars lay abandoned at First Beach. Enter flip flops, sparkly pink and a little too big to be mine, responsible for the ice cubes (formerly feet) attached to my ankles. The chain of events terminates in a complete failure of my already greatly handicapped manual dexterity and a very short moment as an extremely poorly timed comic interlude among the Clearwater kith and kin.

Or maybe it really started the moment I caught the clean, woodsy scent of Jacob Black.

My lack of breakfast, how cold my feet were, the dozens of tear-stained faces – everything faded as soon as I smelled Jacob. My body tightened of its own volition, breasts and fingers and abdomen prickling in anticipation. The reaction was as physical as mental, heat burning my neck and face as I felt the dampening in my borrowed underwear. It wasn't the electric tingle of touching Edward, but more like electricity itself: erratic but strong.

Instead of Jacob, however, three heads snapped in perfect synchronicity as Charlie and I entered the hospital room. Sam Uley, Paul and a third face I didn't immediately recognize. There were slight height variations – Sam was the tallest – but otherwise I had the unfortunate urge to giggle as disappointment and disbelief ripped through me. How on earth could no one suspect them of otherworldliness? The inscrutable look that Sam gave me – almost quizzical – passed through Paul (his version featured narrowed eyes) and then to the third boy, who favored me with the ghost of a smile.

It was Seth Clearwater, I was sure of it.

A Seth that had been stretched and broadened enormously from the last time I had seen him only two months ago. My heart stopped for a second at the thought of this thirteen year old werewolf – yes, he _looked_ much older – fighting Victoria. If it were just me I could rationalize things – I was very good at it. And while I didn't want to die (I knew I had crossed some threshold where this was true), I had already passed my sewing needle and was heading towards the atomic bomb. How could I have confidence in them, in the pack, if thirteen year olds were all that stood between Charlie and Victoria?

I don' t know what kind of tells I was displaying to the room at large – but the second the oversized flip flop sole doubled over, twisting my ankle and nearly sending me into the backs of a group of women who had circled Charlie, I was caught in a rock solid grip that brooked no arguments. The heat of the grip was searing, the scent of sunshine on pines strong. But I was also certain my arm was broken, as delicacy was not a consideration. Taking a deep breath, mumbling an embarrassed thanks, I looked up at the boy who had caught me.

And swallowed hard as I looked into the hostile eyes of Paul Goodwin.

Ok, I had just gone straight to atomic bomb.

***

I decided on the pop tarts, feeding my quarters into the machine and waiting for the steel coil to release the goods. I had taken off the offending flip flops in consideration of the endless supply of waiting room hazards: low lying end tables, lamp cords and chair bases. Glancing briefly down at the bright red mark just above my left wrist, I could tell with expert certainty that it was going to bruise. _A matched set with the one on my scalp and my torso._

When I looked up, I saw the pop tarts – and Paul's reflection on the glass. I jumped, tracers of unease traveling the length of my spine.

One corner of his mouth turned up and I suppose had he not attempted to end my short life a week ago I would have found him reasonably good looking. Instead, I thought the curve of his lips was faintly menacing. Faintly in that we were in Clallam County Hospital and I didn't think he would kill me with witnesses.

"Do I make you nervous?"

There was no need to lie: my palms were sweating and my heart was beating like a drum. "Yes." He was standing very close to me and frankly I was surprised I hadn't heard him approach on the heavily waxed lino. If I breathed our bodies would touch. I sucked in my gut, keeping an eye on his reflection.

"Good." There wasn't self-satisfaction in the single word, exhaled from his chest with a grimness that vibed with the dark circles under his eyes and the exhaustion that chiseled his face. It was more like… relief. He wasn't as tall as Jacob or even Sam, but dwarfed me without effort. "So what's your end game vampire girl?" His voice was unkind as it spit out the word vampire.

"My… _end game_?" It might have been the oxygen deprivation of holding my breath so long, but I wasn't catching the drift. I turned so that my back was against the vending machine, looking up into Paul's eyes. They were so dark I couldn't discern iris from pupil.

"Nothing personal. _Yet_. But I'm trying to decide if you're worth it," he said baldly.

"Worth what, exactly?" I was hoping that certain key phrases wouldn't appear in his answer. Like: whether I was worth the effort of dragging into the woods around First Beach never to be found again.

"Everything. The lives of myself and my brothers. Our tribe. Our secret. Jake." The list was fairly broad. "I mean, there's obviously something about you that has his panties in a bunch. That draws leeches like flies. But it's beyond me. You're just a girl." He gave me a dark once over. "A plain… ordinary girl." There was a note of wonder in his voice. And then he scowled.

No one had put their finger on my secret so succinctly. My secret truth. My secret fears. I _knew_ I didn't deserve Jake. A consolation prize so bright that he just might block out the very thing he was consoling me for. But I _wanted_ to deserve him – despite the answering scowl of the part of me that was harboring and abetting what was still involved with Edward. Falling in with the Cullens had been so easy. No decisions, no trial and errors. With the stamp of destiny, the assurance of decades, it had been comfortable to not have to take responsibility, to not have to suffer consequences. But I had never _earned_ it, not really. I would have to earn Jacob.

"If _he_," I had no doubts that Paul meant Edward, "shows up again – like the girl vampire – whose side will you take? Do you even know?"

Well, obviously I wasn't going to take Victoria's side – as the girl vampire in question. "They're not coming back," I leaked the vital truth of the whole sorry thing. And you know what? It actually felt sort of ok to do so – like poison leeched from a suppurating wound. "They're _never _coming back." I repeated the words a second time, maybe trying to convince Paul as his look had turned increasingly skeptical in response to my answer. Or maybe giving substance to what my mind knew. "But I don't know if I can turn it off," a sentiment that could have easily reflected the stream of words coming out of my mouth. "I want to. I want things to be… I don't know… _normal_? Or whatever constitutes as normal here."

"I think it's too late for that," And I knew he meant more than just for me. He … the pack were in it, like Jake said, for a life sentence. "You're either a wolf girl or a vampire girl. There are no sidelines in this game. At some point you have to throw it all in – heart, guts, head. I just hope no one dies before you can decide. Cause it's not personal. _Yet_. You hurt Jake and…" He let the words drop unfinished, looking down at the pop tarts in the vending machine tray. "You going to eat both of those?"

In a blink he was just a teenager, like me. A tired, confused teenager with anger management issues and the ability to eat a horse in one sitting. I'm not saying I "got" Paul – but he was a lot like Emmett. Loyal to the pack and protective of its members.

"Probably not," my stomach shrieked against the blatant lie.

"Thanks." He inhaled the pop tart in one swallow. "I can't remember the last time I ate." He sank down into one of the waiting room chairs, the wooden frame creaking under his weight. "You really don't think they'll be back?" He seemed amused by this as if sharing a joke I wasn't privy to.

"Why would they?" I asked, dropping into a chair nearby. "There's nothing here they can't live without."

***

Squeezing into the backseat of Sam's late model Chevy Chevelle with Seth and Seth's six feet and change of legs was a feat in and of itself. The car itself was painted a matte black, spray paint by the looks of it, but I discerned from the conversation in the car that Sam had plans for its rehabilitation. These plans were spelled J-A-C-O-B.

I wanted to ask about him, where he was, what he was doing. But the only one who could hear me was Seth and I was tongue-tied at the thought of pumping him – Harry Clearwater's son – for non-vital information.

Sam was a very capable driver but like most of the Pack had a tendency towards speeding. I made a point of reminding them about known speed traps in Forks (there was one) while the McMuffin I'd eaten earlier – Paul had eaten ten by himself – sat uneasily in my stomach.

"So I hear you cliff dived yesterday," Seth brought up casually. Sam turned down the radio, Paul watching from the right passenger side mirror.

"I… not exactly."

"She could have died," Sam pointed out, his voice carrying the authoritarian tone I recognized from the day before. "And about that," both Paul and Seth looked away as Sam started to get into his stride. "I know I don't have control over your actions. But I would hope that with the threat to your friends and family… if only to yourself even… you would put a little more thought into your actions." My face was burning with the scolding I deserved. "We're doing what we can but it would help if we – and I think you know I mean Jacob – didn't have to worry about you while on patrol. Think about it."

Seth, in a move straight out of Jacob's playbook, took my left hand in a massive fist and squeezed it reassuringly. Or at least I think it was meant reassuringly. I tried to smile, my eyes watering, as he was close to breaking the bones of my hand. "Hand… _hand_!" I gasped and he let go – apologizing as Sam pulled up in front of the Olympic Outfitters.

"The plan?" Sam prompted, Paul not moving to let me out until I recited it.

"I am to go straight into the Olympic Outfitters and not leave until the end of my shift. At which time someone will be waiting, in my truck, to take me home. Where I will stay until either Charlie or a member of the pack escorts me tomorrow." He had gone over it four times. Just in case I had plans to repeat yesterday's folly. Not a chance in hell I could top that.

They waited until I was inside before driving off. When I came into the store, still wearing yesterday's clothes and smelling of fast food and forest, I was surprised to see Mr. Newton on the floor – but no customers. I wondered where Mike was as I headed towards the back room where my employee vest was stashed. I hoped that no one noticed the flip flops.

"Bella." My name was a summons and I moved towards him. Mike's parents were nice people, but I couldn't help but feel like I was under an intense microscope when I was around them.

"Good morning, Mr. Newton." I was getting used to my voice, but the croaking had an immediate effect on Mike's dad.

"Are you sick?" He asked, evidently concerned.

"No." _A-huh… explaining my voice as…?_ "Well, I _might_ be coming down with something," I lied, knowing that Mr. Newton would talk to Charlie in a heartbeat. Charlie had to know things. But he didn't need extraneous details, the ones that he would dwell on instead of the important fact that a vampire was stalking me. Us. "But I'm not contagious." I added with a tight smile. I was the worst liar ever. I was pretty sure he was going to see right through my words, but he didn't.

"Well, Mike'll be in soon," he glanced at the industrial sized clock over my right shoulder, frowning. "Why don't you go home for the day? School on Monday and you don't want to be sick and miss out on your senior year. Mike and I can hold down the fort." March wasn't their busiest time of year, so while I did want to work, I couldn't really formulate a good counter argument.

"Is it ok if I call for a ride?" I knew Jacob's phone number by heart. I had called it enough during Mono season.

It was a measure of how distracted he was that he didn't ask about the truck. The '53 Chevy was the topic of most of the short conversations I had had with Mike's dad since I had started working at the Outfitters. He _always_ asked if it was still running. "Oh yeah, help yourself." Mr. Newton agreed, moving past me to stand looking out the door.

There was no answer at Jake's. I called twice – but they didn't have an answering machine. I could have called Charlie – ok, I _should_ have called Charlie – but the Olympic Outfitters was only a short, I guessed twenty minutes, walk to the house. Mostly paved roads and sidewalks. I could totally do this.

"Thanks, Mr. Newton."

He broke his reverie out the window and offered me a smile. "Get home safe, Bella." I smiled, reassuring him that I would. "And if you see Mike out there…" he added, strangely, "Send him this way."

***

When I finally got home – over an hour later – I was not in the best of shape.

The roads had been choked with water, a great deal of which ended up on me and the frayed cotton of my left knee had finally given up the ghost with the assistance of a downed tree branch I hadn't noticed. I didn't care whose shoes I had borrowed. As soon as I let myself into the house, I went straight to the kitchen and threw them away. Until I retrieved my tennis shoes, or more likely dipped into my ravaged savings for a new pair, my hiking boots would have to suffice.

Charlie had not been back yet. I picked up a post-it note on the floor, apparently blown off the counter. In his distinctive scrawl, he had written: _Rm 312_. Harry's room. I needed a shower, a new change of clothes and a couple aspirins to tone down the aches and pains. While I tried to call the Black's, again with no answer, I thought I could put something together for Charlie that he could reheat when he finally came home. I grabbed a half pound of ground round out of the freezer and set it on the counter. _Would Sue Clearwater want something_? I wondered. I had never known anyone who died – James not included – and wondered if sending food over was a real thing or a Hollywood custom. I pulled out the other half pound of hamburger just in case.

Leaving my jacket on a kitchen chair, I took the stairs gingerly. My body was a rictus of pain and I felt like an old lady. Muscles groaning that I didn't even know I had. I peeled off my button-up in the hallway, dropping it in the bathroom hamper and then shaking out a few pills that I swallowed down with tap water.

There was a sugary scent to the bathroom that I hadn't noticed before and I checked the outlet, thinking that Charlie had refilled the dried up gel thing that had been in residence longer that I had. But the old standby, which had probably stopped scenting the bathroom sometime around the turn of the century, was still in residence.

The smell was stronger as I palmed off the lights in the bathroom and headed towards my bedroom. As I got closer it was sweeter, not unbearable, but somehow _off_. The door to my room was closed, nothing unusual in that, and I turned the knob wondering if the only bottle of perfume I owned (a gift from Alice) had fallen and spilled. _There's a good reason I never wear the stuff_.

My curtains were drawn and late morning light, gray as it always was in Forks, spilled into the room. The smell was strongest here – _obviously_ originating from the room itself – and I threw open the door with the intent of facing it head on. I wasn't entirely sure how to clean up perfume, but maybe ammonia would cut the odor?

It took me a moment to realize it wasn't perfume.

Rising panic flooded my body and I lost sensation in my legs, tumbling onto the worn wood of my floor. I think I was screaming, but everything was distant as if wrapped in cotton batting.

Mike Newton – I was sure it was him although his face had an undefined, unformed quality to it – was a stiff white form on the tangled nest of my bedding. One arm extended, perhaps permanently, over the edge locked at the joint.

There were five jagged claw marks across his chest, bloodless skin like rubber where it had been peeled back from his chest. His neck was likewise brutalized, only attached by the effort of his spinal cord.

I don't remember much after that. Not vomiting my guts out on my bedroom floor. Not crawling on my hands and knees into the hallway. Not falling halfway down the stairs before I caught myself. Not calling Jacob – his number was the only one I could remember. Nor who I talked to or what I said to make them rush to me.

***

When I woke up again, I was at Clallam County Hospital, Emily Young in the chair beside my bed.


	12. Chapter 12 Other voices, other rooms

**Leah Runs**

**Thursday, March 16 – **_**La Push Quileute Reservation**_

**Sometime around midnight**

The audience – if that's what it was supposed to be – was not going well at all.

"Lee-- _Leah_. _Please_."

I had heard that word from Sam in so many different ways. The aching _please_ when I brought him to the brink of his endurance, begging for my hands on him. The quick _please_ when he needed aid in a flash, always willing to offer it. The polite _please_ as he offered me something, always careful to see whether it pleased me or not. The visceral _please_ of his begging for understanding, while the only man I loved left me sobbing on my front porch.

I would like to think I was immune to Sam Uley's pleas. But apparently I'm a glutton for punishment.

I think it was only Seth's presence that gave us the pretense of civility – and he had moved away from the tension that crackled in the room with all the instincts of his newly found wolf-self. Likewise, the smell of Billy Black's pipe smoke through the open window was fading with the pine scent of Embry's fur, a scent that clung to his human form, as they moved further from the house.

Leaving me alone with the object of my desire and pain. _Good call, guys_, I thought bitterly as I felt the fingertips along my spine, the tremble of my body trying to come apart at the seams.

"Please _what_, Sam?" I asked, starting to get into my stride as anger poured out of my pores like poison. "Please _forgive_? Because I now have the body of the bitch you think I am? Or please… give in? What a boon for you! Now you can fuck me over on every level possible to fuck someone, Sam. You don't have to stop at simple verbal destruction, anymore. Now that my mind and body are at your command, the creative possibilities are endless."

He flinched physically at every word that came off my tongue, arms folded over his chest as if they could shield him from _me_. That hurt. That he could protect himself from me and I was completely defenseless, as always. Par for the course when it came to Sam Uley. The pack thought that he was black for his heart.

But I knew he was black because he was the devil. _My_ devil. And he was my Alpha.

Some people had all the luck.

"_Leah_." My spine stiffened as the words rang through my body, my blood. I gritted my teeth against it, but it was hopeless. If Sam Uley told me to jump off a bridge – regardless of all parental warnings to the contrary – I would be on the edge of the Tacoma Narrows as soon as my paws could get me there. And I would probably still love him.

"Leah." His second iteration of my name was softer, a sigh. "I know—"he stopped abruptly, the self-effacing grin I remembered turning the sharp planes of his face into something only slightly less than evil incarnate. "I don't know what you're going through. I understand the physical stuff. The Phasing, the shift-fever, the _anger_. But –" If not an eloquent speaker, he had never been one to mince words. Every time he looked at me he stumbled, finding it easier to look over my shoulder, at my feet.

_Don't feel sorry for him, Clearwater_.I could feel my anger brewing, boiling beneath the surface. If it had been anyone other than Sam Uley, I would have come apart at the seams. But I couldn't let him win this. I only had my pride left.

"It can't be easy for you. Any of _this_. I know when I first Shifted it was very painful. I couldn't shift back for nearly a week—"

My vision turned red with the force of my fury. I was relegated to a concise "this," as if that word was enough to explain all the fucked up shit I was going through coupled with my father's heart attack and the fact that my ex-boyfriend was now the arbiter of my every action. I remembered that week. I remembered the endless tears I shed for the son of a bitch, the ulcer I had to be treated for after worry had turned my days into frantic phone calls, fruitless searches and stress-induced retching. I remembered with pristine clarity my relief when Billy Black brought him back alive.

_Such a good thing Emily had come down from Neah Bay._

The Phasing was agony as my human skin couldn't contain the beast within. Whorls of silver-gray fur exploded over the sinewy form of my contorting body. With a single, graceful leap I was through the open window and running through the wet night.

Thankfully I had finally figured out how to move in this alien body.

Of course, Sam was after me in a second.

**Alice Gathers**

**Friday, March 17, 2006 – **_**About and around Forks, WA**_

I threw the phone book – the seventh I had been through – with a little more force than I'd intended, the cheap glued spine cracking as it landed, showering the room in a flurry of thin white pages. Clearwaters, Goodwins, Atearas and Fishers fluttering through dust motes and the thin light of early morning.

It was hopeless. Something had closed in me, the filament often tenuous and bright always linking me to my future and the futures of those around me was – whether permanently or temporarily – broken. I could no more foretell the weather in Forks – a peek out of the glass backed house told me the storm had broken to mist – than where one, small human girl was. Or more importantly what she was doing. Thus the phone books in relation to the vaguest of Charlie's clues.

I was, for all intents and purposes, blind. I had been from the moment Charlie's response to my perfectly practiced and emoted queries had been to question why I was back.

"Why are you back, Alice?"

It had completely taken me by surprise - something I didn't think anyone was capable of doing. Charlie had never questioned me or my motives with Bella before. He had been disarmed by my grace and beauty from the first, never giving me more than a topical skim – under a polite, but cursory barrage of small talk – whenever I had collected Bella or visited her house.

But I had read other things in his too perceptive eyes, things that while not unfamiliar among humans who saw too much I had never expected to see from Charlie Swan. Hesitancy. Disbelief. The first stirrings of doubt.

And the smell that nearly covered the clean sweetness of Charlie's blood. An earthiness that spoke of animal musk and the dark, rotting things of the deep woods. The smell of the La Push canines. Perhaps I had underestimated them in some way. Had they spoken to Charlie Swan of us – their legends of the Cold Ones? Secrecy on both ends was imperative to the Treaty. As was the sanctity of borders – and I had caught the rank scent of them on Cullen lands. Fresh tracks that had worked to erode the boundary lines since we had left Forks. They had not expected my return.

But neither had I expected to find Bella in a wolves' den.

I was fairly certain that the 'Jake' Charlie had spoken of was one of them although I could neither recall a face nor a name. Edward had always told me I – all of the Cullens - relied too heavily on my Visions, but not until the moment I was pouring over the white pages I had snatched from area telephone booths did I realize how prescient he had been. I had mastered the microfiche machine at the New York Hall of Records, but the workings of the computers here baffled me. I knew. I had never had to find.

I needed Jasper. My head and the ache in my heart told me that. But it was bad enough that I was here, disobeying both Carlisle and Edward's wishes. If Jasper joined me there would be unavoidable questions. Questions that I didn't yet have answers for.

Who was Jake?

Why had the boy known the name Victoria?

Why could I not See?

I had the remainder of the morning before Jasper expected my call. I would be unable to hide anything from him over the phone line, even if I'd wanted to. Regardless of whether my emotional wellbeing was visible, we knew each other well enough that my choice of words, the parsing of my sentences would clue him in. No force on earth could stop him from coming to Forks.

So I had to think. Plan. Neither of which were my strongest attributes. If I had to gather the troops as it were, I had to have an argument, a reason. I would have to have evidence in the absence of knowing.

Thankfully, I knew how to use my cell phone.

**Leah Caught**

**Thursday, March 16-Friday, March 17, 2006 – Somewhere northeast of La Push**

He was the suggestion of a shadow under the thready moonlight. The heavy fall of rain beading against the coarse coat of my fur, silver among the trees. The air in my lungs was good air, clean and cool against the heated exhalation of my breath, misting before me.

I ran as if hell itself were behind me. When really it was _inside_ me. Inside my head. Inside my body.

I had no natural buffer to the voice – Sam's voice – that melted from coaxing to reprimand to absorption into the exhilaration of the chase. I ran until the concepts of _Leah_ and _girl_ and _reason_ burned away. All that remained was the anger: an endless, visceral thing that bloomed from gut to heart to head.

Perhaps I would have continued to run forever – a fast, powerful stride that kept me leagues ahead of the black wolf – if not for the sudden cramping in my left hind leg. I willed my body to _move_, but the pain was crippling, excruciating, dropping me in a shallow stream somewhere in the wilds beneath Bogachiel Peak. The rusty water soaked into the small cuts at my flanks, into the deep sliver in my right forepaw. The ragged, sharpness of my breathing rippling the surface of the water.

I could see myself through Sam's eyes as his dark form threw itself up the incline, dodging the spines of mountain pines with an ease born of long use. A small grey wolf darkened by the water contrasting sharply against the thick tangle of wild grass. Already my rage was siphoning into the cold rock beneath me, the marshy ground. The raw pads of my paws bound again in the thin cloth of human skin.

It stole my breath, the way his dark eyes traced the brown, lean lines of my body. I saw it for the first time: the newness of muscles that thickened and strengthened my torso and shoulders, the wet tangle of my dark hair as it curled against the dusky bud of my aureole. I saw it _through_ Sam's eyes, through the lens of his mind. I knew that he was not unmoved by my body, the lean curve of my hip, the bunching muscles of my calves. Whatever spell that had woven him into the fabric of Emily's life had been unevenly crafted: weft and warp thinning in places where what he felt for me – what he _still_ felt for me – existed beneath the surface.

I had a piece of his heart still. A small, dark place that had been ravaged and stoked to flame by the scent of my body, the keen scent of a female wolf. An equal.

I was a fool, but I wanted him. I would _always_ want him, my body trained to his scent and taste and weight. I could smell the musk of my own arousal as the black wolf shifted effortlessly into the shape of a man sluiced by rain. I could no longer read his mind – his thoughts had turned towards the firm flesh of my breasts – but he could no more hide the physical clues of his arousal than I could hide my scent. Had this power, this _thing_ between us ever really faded? Perhaps he was as helpless against it as I was. Or I was giving him too much credit.

Despite the coldness of the rain, the stream beneath me, it was nothing against the heat of our bodies. Sam dropped to his knees beside me, the warm rough skin of his thigh brushing my hip. My body tightened, my abdomen clenching in anticipation as he took my right hand without asking.

"I don't want to hurt you." His words were thick with longing, with meaning. At the same moment, he drew his nails across the pad of my palm, drawing blood and the thick sliver out in one movement. I gasped and his mouth went to the wound, laving the blood with his tongue. Fire sparked from every nerve ending in my hand. He traced the planes of my face, the strong black brows and down the high cheekbones to the lines of my mouth. His breath following the same path a moment later. "I never wanted to hurt you."

The first brush of our mouths in over a year broke through me with the unbound force of nature. Our tongues greeting, our lips remembering. His hands were sure and rough, kneading and reworking the shape of my breasts to his pleasure and mine. His body was heavy and solid, my own giving only marginally against his as we rolled out of the streambed and into the tall blades of wild grass nearby – missiles of water beading our bodies as we tangled and pressed against each other: breasts against torso, cock against the slick folds of my labia. There was no need for either of us to hold back, our bodies suited for the rough mating of spirit wolves. Every mark of his teeth on my skin would disappear; every bruise of his blood brought close to the skin with my mouth would fade within the hour. As temporary as our frantic sex in the shade of the Bogachiel.

I caught his hips with my legs, tipping him beneath the weight of my body. He fell willingly, bones and sinew and muscles sinking into the soft ground on a sigh as I sheathed his cock inside my body. I rode him hard and frantically while he held my hips with his large hands, the sounds ripped from his throat more howl than human, smothered a moment later as he arched upwards to devour my breasts.

I could feel the beat of his heart in my body, my own broken heart throbbing in double time as I rubbed the hooded juncture of my clitoris against his pubic bone inching closer to release. I came suddenly, spasming against him. I was lightheaded and fever touched, the pinkness of my skin hidden in the darkness. Twisted in Sam's strong hands, I fell beneath him as he continued to move inside me, frantically trying to catch up to my pace. My second orgasm was almost painful, intensely coursing through me as he pulled out at the last second, his hot semen spraying my torso.

Every ounce of strength within him was gone, sinking into the sex-softened contours of my body, into my arms that now had the strength to support him, his face against my throat. I had become very skilled in weeping without sound and I could barely tell the rain from my tears.

I lay in the high grass, blinking away rain and tears as Sam Uley succumbed to sleep in my arms. He was a restless sleeper, he always had been, and when he moved away from the heat of my body towards the cool grass, I pulled myself up to my feet.

_Why?_ I questioned the lightening sky – whatever thing that had granted Emily the heart of the man I loved and as my consolation prize made me a wolf. The storm was already breaking overhead, the worst of it heading west towards the Pacific. A warming breeze caught the ends of my hair, strong with the scent of wolves and sex and wet forest.

I waited a long time for an answer that never came. _But when had things ever been easy for you, Clearwater?_ It only took one thought to rend my shape to that of a wolf. I only looked back once before I left Sam alone in the misting rain.

_Leah? Are you okay?_

Embry. _Of course_ I lied, sending him the image of the first time Emily and Sam had made eye contact after Billy Black had "found" Sam. It hurt like a son of a bitch to dredge it up: vintage Leah Clearwater poison from an endless well of the same. But it covered everything else completely. My love for Sam, the fevered moments we could never replicate. I could _feel_ Embry's mental retraction from the intensity of my mind. And I smiled.

Hating Sam Uley was the kindest thing I could do for him.

**Alice Finds **

**Friday, March 17, 2006 – In and around Forks, WA**

There was nothing obviously wrong with the Suburban: dark blue with Washington State plates and the requisite air-freshener hanging limply on the rear view mirror.

Except that something about it nagged at my subconscious – halfway down the block from Bella's house – and parked further from the curb than normal. As if the vehicle were waiting. I pulled Carlisle's Mercedes up behind it effortlessly, the left front and rear tires churning up the dark brown water from last night's storm. Obviously a plugged storm drain.

It was a quarter after 11 and a glance at the depleting fuel gauge reconciled with my feelings of having been everywhere but turning up nothing. While the engine plinked its cool down around me, I sat in the leather seat absolutely motionless – hoping beyond all hope to conjure up _something_ in the soundproofed cab. But there was only the increasingly familiar sense of _nothing_. I opened my eyes and stared at the Suburban, noting that it was now closer to 11:30. My eyes read and reread the license plate: 299-PKX, the small sticker in the left rear window for the LA Lakers.

And I recognized the vehicle. Mike Newton of the inappropriate thoughts. Forks High School Senior. Whose vehicle – a pristine 2006 Suburban – did not belong here. Unlike Charlie and Bella, his family had one of the larger, newer developments on the East side of Forks, just beyond the City limits. _He had previously lived in Los Angeles_, I remembered the information from Edward's information gathering. _His claim to fame in Forks, I suppose_.

With a carefully timed movement, I missed the curb entirely as I landed on the moss cemented gravel that passed for a lawn in this part of the world, closing the driver's side door behind me. Not even a scratch on my new patent leather rain boots. The air was wet – which did not carry scent well – and cold. Careful not to touch anything, even undead I left fingerprints, I looked over the exterior of the Suburban snapping a shot of the vehicle location with my shiny pink Nokia Xpress.

If there had been anything of note, it had been washed away in last night's storm. And I was beginning to think I was chasing ghosts until I came up to the driver's side door. It wasn't closed all the way, as if it were left to close on its own. I snapped a picture of that too and then pulled out the black leather gloves I never needed but looked exceptionally fine on me, slipping them on before I touched the door.

The door was unlocked, although that wasn't uncommon in Forks, but nothing happened when I opened it to see inside. No dome light activated, no blinking "door ajar" sign on the dashboard. The battery was dead. The interior was thick with the things that teenagers collected: fast food wrappers, textbooks and CD jewel cases. Nothing that said surveillance. Not even binoculars.

I left the door exactly as I'd found it, noting how it swung half-closed under its own weight as I released it. As it closed, something coppery caught my eye in the doorframe, imperceptible perhaps to the human eye – but mine hadn't suffered that flaw in decades. I opened the door again and checked the rubber jamb, pulling out a long, curling thread of red hair. I didn't have to smell it to know who it belonged to. We only had so many to begin with and any Vampire girl worth her vintage had to keep track of every single one of them. I only knew one who didn't. I drew it under my nose, catching the faint strain of her essence, earthier than anything Rosalie or I could claim.

The scream that tore though the street a second later was undeniably human and thick with human terror. Victoria. Mike Newton. Bella's house.

There was no chance that anyone saw me as I blurred down the street, a second to reach Bella's house, a moment to catapult myself up the Spruce tree outside her bedroom window. Her _open_ bedroom window. I almost took out the boy's arm as I entered, rolling back on my haunches a second later to avoid the contents of Bella's stomach. _My_ Bella whose eyes never questioned my appearance, who I wasn't entirely sure even saw _me_.

"Isabella," I took her jaw somewhat more forcefully than I'd intended – I'd forgotten how fragile humans are – forcing her to look at me. "I want you to calm down." She smelled delicious and horribly: rife with wolf musk and drying sex. In fact, the whole room smelled like wolf – it was all over Mike Newton's body, in her bedding and near the windowsill. "Go down to the kitchen. Wait for me." I don't know how much of it she understood, half crawling and half walking out of the room. I was almost certain the word she kept repeating – the _name _that was either litany or recrimination – was _Jake_.

The body was white and stiff. But most damning of all were the five jagged claw marks where his heart _should_ have been. The brutalized spinal cord was barely supporting the pale face of Mike Newton, Bella's dark comforter doing the rest.

I rubbed my brow as I gathered my thoughts. I needed Jasper. I pulled out the cell phone and took a careful shot of the body, sending it as picture mail to Jasper's phone with the simple message: _come to me_ – knowing he would check the cache as soon as he got reception after his morning class.

These wolves… these children… could they be killers? I had no idea. None at all. I could hear the sound of Bella's truck below. _Charlie?_ I wondered, surprised _yet again_ that she had been without it. Turning back towards the body, I noticed something dark and shredded laying caught on the corner of a loose floorboard.

I had it in my hands the moment I knew my enemy was near.

I turned towards the doorway, my lips drawn over the lethal edge of my teeth as he came tearing up the stairs, the floor quaking under his weight and fury.

I didn't have to ask who he was. I was holding the torn remains of his shirt.


	13. Chapter 13 Jacob

I thought Chapter 8 was my favorite - until I finished Chapter 13. I love Jacob. I love all the plotty things I have cemented into action. But most of all I want to be Leah Clearwater ;)

Also, since my updates are so erratic, you can get _Walking with the Ghost_ updates via my Twitter account, the eponymous: **at5115**.

Please let me know what you think - I love to read reviews (and I write faster when I know someone is reading the story),

--at5115

About ten miles outside of La Push, I realized I was being an idiot. I would like to say that I rarely felt that way, but sadly it was becoming more and more common. If I had had any doubts on that count, the pack was there to reinforce it. Six fold, now.

_The esteemed Mr. Black. How kind of you to join us. I offer my thanks in advance for giving me enough visuals to cancel my subscription to Playboy._

I snapped the mental cable of my thoughts – feeding into the pack mind – into the thinnest of filaments… but it was too late. In between self-doubt and my hatred of Edward Cullen, everything I had done last night (and again this morning) had permeated the hive mind. I had no control over what I was sending out. My aerial was permanently stuck on the "On" position and was transmitting loud and clear. At the moment to Paul Goodwin. _Great_.

_You are such an ass, Goodwin. _And apparently Leah Clearwater. I couldn't imagine two people I wanted _less_ to know about my fledgling attempts at lovemaking than Paul and Leah.

_Thanks for the faith, Black. It might have escaped your martyr complex that I _am _defending you here._ Leah's voice was louder than any of the other's – almost as if she were screaming mentally over the background noise of her mind. As most of that noise featured a naked Sam – something I saw enough of on a daily basis, thank you very much – compliments of her personal hell, I could only hope she lowered the volume as she adjusted. Otherwise I was going to have a permanent migraine. On top of the brain bleach I already needed. _Although I probably should be offering pointers, instead. I never thought you would go for Cullen's sloppy seconds._

For a second, my brain short-circuited. I had known Leah Clearwater my entire life. About as long as I had known Paul with the added bonding of spaghetti dinners, marshmallow roasts at First Beach and one disastrous Annual Seafair Indian Days Pow Wow. But I thought in that instant that I was going to kill her.

I caught Paul's extremely off-key mental singing somewhere on the periphery of the pack mind: _The fever's gonna catch you when the bitch gets back! _

The visuals were there before I formed a response in my head. I don't know if it was because she was a girl, but Leah was light years ahead of me despite only sharing the pack mind for less than 24 hours. _You don't even want to go there, Black. I can make you menstruate. _

Paul's mind went completely white for a moment – images of the incredible horrors she could bestow blanking out his normal thought processes. I was right there with him: _could she _do _that?_

_Wanna try me? Now get your head out of your ass, Black. You're still alive, so that's one thing in your favor. _ I was _almost_ sure she intended the last statement to bolster my ego. Under normal circumstances, the qualification of having a pulse wouldn't have carried as much weight as it did. For all the biting, Leah had managed to dropkick my funk at the Cullen's return.

Yes, there was a Cullen in the neighborhood. One of the female blood suckers _not_ of the undead male variety commonly known as Edward. But it wasn't like I didn't have supernatural chops of my own when it came down to it. I was bigger than their biggest leech – the dark haired one with the Jeep Wrangler.

_I could still take you, Black._

I didn't sparkle under any circumstances (unless it was the Fourth of July). And I have that whole sort of beautiful thing going for me.

_I don't know how we could have _possibly_ missed that!_

I didn't stack up too poorly with competition that was only marginally less ripe than the walking dead, one skin shade removed from the abominable snowman and noted for constipated posturing that put Calvin Klein models to shame.

_Go get 'em, Killer._

Of course, there was the whole possession of a Volvo S60R thing, _slightly_ higher on the hierarchy of German engineering from a Rabbit. And as Quil, Embry and I had decided: the car was the most important thing.

_God, boys are so stupid. _

It was a good thing Bells couldn't tell a grill from a gasket. Otherwise I would have to spend the rest of my life in hock trying to scrape together the cash and parts for something to top a Cullen ride. I decided not to remind myself that Edward Cullen would never have to make his own car. Neither would he have to spend the morning digging through the Salvation Army intake bins for shoes. And only if someone took pity on me long enough to borrow me a couple of dollars. You would think that after generations of black wolves in the family there would be a tribal fund for these sorts of things. No such luck.

_Are you serious? I'm going to have to talk to someone about that. If I have to listen to my Ex in my head for the rest of my life, I am going to need some sort of reparations. _

_All in all, I think she's taking her teats for tits swap fairly well_, Paul commented, having gathered his wits together enough for a coherent thought. _And I don't have any money. I gave my last dollar to that fucker Embry._ I got hazy impressions of having lost some sort of a bet.

_At least I have options, Goodwin. I doubt you'd know the difference._ The threat of showing us the 'feminine mystique' still hung in her words. _Although with Black's naughty home pictures, we might all be enlightened shortly._

_I can't help it. The polite thing to do would be to ignore it._ They both laughed.

_Where the fuck have you been all night anyway? I had to babysit the other Clearwater – the nice one – as our esteemed Alpha and Pack Bitch were missing for most of the evening._

That was the first I'd heard about Sam not making check-in. I suddenly felt slightly better about the two I'd missed last night. _Maybe no babysitting?_

_Ok, I admit it. We had torrid sex last night. Inspired by the girl from Neah Bay._ I was impressed at how she'd cherry picked that out of the pack mind. She was quick.

Paul mentally chuffed. _You wish. _I wasn't sure if he was responding to me or Leah.

_I'm here. _Sam's voice was firm and loud, strangely without any of the background static that usually followed his mental thoughts. _Embry and Seth? Jared?_

_Sleeping. _Paul was drawing a blank on Jared, so I took pity on him.

_Jared's probably still on 110 waiting for me_.

_Leah?_ There was _something _in the way Sam said her name that made Paul and I squirm slightly. He never talked to us – and by 'us' I meant those of us who weren't rated XX– like that. I couldn't explain it more than that as Leah's exasperation shot through the pack mind.

_Obviously I'm fine. Just don't go thinking that last night meant anything, Alpha. We're two wolves that pass in the night. _ Again with the loud mental voice, this time with more melodrama than English lit. If she started quoting Shakespeare I was seriously never Phasing again. _ I've seen your love bites and I don't want to play._

And with her unerring precision, Leah Clearwater had turned status quo into status _oh no_.

There was nothing on Sam's end for a very long minute. I went between wondering how Leah's bad mood was going to impact my quality time with Bells (in effecting Sam) and disbelief that she had said what she had. Regardless of our personal opinions of imprints none of us had ever gone _there_.

_Leah, you've had a very long and confusing couple of days. Go home, find out how your Dad is doing and practice Phasing. I can't allow you out in public if you can't control yourself._ His alpha voice had all the force of a mental lash, tying her to his dictate. _Jacob_, I was hopeful – he had been very lenient with Leah, _for being too clever to obey the intent of my word will spend the morning patrolling with Jared._

It was better than I'd hoped for. At least he hadn't put Bells completely off limits.

_Don't tempt me, Jake._ Why couldn't I get any hints of Sam's train of thought before it parked in the station? I couldn't detect sarcasm or seriousness. I couldn't detect anything. It was almost like he was on autopilot. _I'll be at the hospital if anyone needs me._

_I'll come with_, Paul offered. _Since I no longer have patrolling duty this morning_. I caught his enthusiasm loud and clear.

Thankfully Jared was still waiting for me, parked alongside the 110 and leaning against the open passenger side door of his Chevy Caprice when I made my way back. He didn't say anything, which was remarkable in and of itself. But he'd had the foresight to have collected the tattered remains of my pants… and shoes. "While you are _undoubtedly_ a fine cut of a man capable of converting even Vampire Princesses, your unclad ass is not touching my leather interiors."

"I know for a fact that the '81 Caprice did _not_ come with leather interiors." I was never more grateful for the weedy patch of butterfly bushes that were choking out the native – and smaller – plants alongside the 110.

He appeared unimpressed with my intimate knowledge of Chilton's. I groaned as he threw me a pair of shorts and the _shirt_. "You're still not going to sit naked in my car. I _do _have a reputation to maintain." I don't know where it originally came from, the _shirt_: a 3XL candy pink Spice Girls shirt – sequins optional – that had last born its terrible brand on Jared's shoulders. There were multiple theories. Embry's suggestion that it was Paul's trophy from the girl from Neah Bay. The now verboten theory that it had once belonged to Leah Clearwater's early childhood: the one complete with braces, glasses and an extra hundred pounds she had lost somewhere on her way to meeting Sam.

In the end, I didn't really have a choice. The Salvation Army had a strict no shirt no service policy and Jared was quite capable of making me run alongside the car if I didn't comply.

"At least tell me you have a couple of dollars to loan me," I motioned towards my feet, now coated in mud and pine needles.

"How are you going to learn anything if I keep funding your – and _Embry's_ – rock star lifestyle?" Jared was the only one with a somewhat steady job as a part-time grocery bagger. It didn't hurt that Kim's parents were the owners. Of course, they thought he was very actively involved in tribal affairs – thus explaining the arbitrary absences and patchy working hours.

"You have a _very_ skewed idea of a rock star's lifestyle, Jared." I arched a brow, cleaning off my feet in a puddle before jumping into the Caprice. Regarding Embry – as soon as we were old enough to be admitted into a casino, we were going. He won everything: bets, school raffles and even the genetic draw of the wolf. I knew it was never wise to bet against Embry – and yet Paul and Jared continued to lose their money hand over fist.

"Well… I guess I should loan you the money," he drew the response out as if he had even been considering the alternative. "If only in the interest of dispelling the noble savage stereotypes that you seem to be so set on maintaining." The only noble savagery I knew of – and remembered fondly – was tearing the dark haired leech limb from limb. However, this was Jared's favorite argument and I had learned to either cut him off at the head or to listen in silence. His mother was some sort of high ranking lawyer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Aberdeen and his father was on the Quileute Council. You could never win an argument with a Tageant.

"Or because I'm the only one who will fix your Caprice for the price of parts."

I had a crisp fiver in my palm a few seconds later.

***

We patrolled for most of the early morning, keeping to the treaty boundaries around La Push in deference to the return of Alice Cullen.

Wherever the leech had gone after Sam and I ran her to water at the Pacific, she hadn't crossed back onto Quileute lands. If she _had_ laid any new tracks they were either on Cullen lands or had been washed out by yesterday's storm. Day patrols were more constrained than night patrols – where we were slightly more free to cross the 110 or skirt backyards. _I still think she headed north. Into Canada._

I didn't like the thought of her behind us, toying with the Pack while she tried to break through us to get at Bella. _I don't like it either, Jake. _

At some point Victoria had crossed paths with Bella. At a point where none of the smell of her had remained on Bella's jeans or t-shirt – only in the fibers of her underwear. I couldn't for the life of me imagine how the transfers had occurred.

_You think she was going through her underwear drawer?_ Leah's off hand question came out of left field. Outside of a brief leave of absence, she had Phased and was unable to shift back. Also unable to leave her house as per Sam's interdiction, Leah's link to the pack mind frequently fuzzed out with an intense emotion that neither Jared nor I were comfortable with. Her thoughts were uncomfortably alien to the male pack mind, but after I ended up in a fetal position (very difficult for a wolf) crying about my father, Jared had had to take her to hand. _We can feel everything you feel, Leah. I am so sorry about your father, but we have a psychotic blood sucker out here and it's hard to patrol with Jake's keen animal empathy. _

Yeah, not my finest moment, ever. I don't know why I was so strongly linked to the pack mind, but it was very uncomfortable. _That would presume that Victoria had access to the Swan residence, _Jared offered, following Leah's train of thought while I remembered the failings of my Y chromosome.

Images of my somewhat ham-fisted visit through Bella's bedroom window flooded the pack mind and both Jared and Leah seemed satisfied with Leah's reasoning. _With feats of daring like that, Black, no _wonder _she prefers you over Cullen_. _Did you make her _faint_?_

_She was tired_, I offered in my own defense. _If you're not going to be helpful, maybe you should go back to your one-woman pity party_.

_Hello! Only person who considered that your succubus might actually be visiting the _irresistible _Miss Swan. _Leah stretched the word 'irresistible' into something much less than that.

_But why? If she had access to Bella, why didn't she just kill her? Or Chief Swan?_

_I'm not a vampire psychologist, Jared. I don't know. Maybe she has a Hanes Her Way fetish? Maybe she also felt the strange allure of Bella Swan as their eyes met across a crowded room? _

_I would have smelled her_, I thought a bit more forcefully than I'd intended as the words 'kill' and 'Bella' should never be linked in a sentence, washing out Jared and Leah's thoughts. _We would have smelled her. We added her house to Patrol. We've never caught her scent around Forks._

_Maybe she's using some sort of a decoy scent to cover her tracks? _Jared's thoughts were slow, almost hesitant to believe that vampires were capable of any sort of cunning. Or that we had been fooled.

_Like hunting sprays? Do those things actually work? _ Leah mentally projected the shelf at the checkout at Connweller's with its takeaway items – including the hunting colognes.

I seriously hoped not. _But we've never caught anything odd either. Just our scent._

_And I would have noticed if a vampire had come through Connweller's_, Jared said. _I would have caught the scent, they tend to linger in the heat vents with the recycled air_.

_Yes, but what about the Olympic Outfitters? _Jared and I looked at each other, two sets of dark wolf eyes mirroring each other.

_Jesus Christ. _A vampire with a plan.

***

Emily Young was at the house when Jared and I pulled in the drive, a bag from Connweller's in the front seat between us. Kim, who usually manned the register when not in school, had allowed us to 'borrow' one of every hunting scent: acorn, fox urine and something marketed as 'fresh earth.' In return for her kindness, we lied to her. No one outside of the pack knew about Victoria. Except for Bella.

It wasn't unusual that Emily dropped in, as she usually spent mornings at the University of Washington's extension in Forks where she was studying to be a teacher and often dropped by with food for Dad and I and by extension Embry who was more often than not at my house. What was unusual was that she was sitting on the porch, a thin shape in a dark blue zip-up hoodie with no sign of having driven over. She stood up the minute Jared's car crunched the gravel of the drive, both arms knotted together over her abdomen with a look on her face that was both relief and disappointment. Jared shot me a look that mirrored my own: confused, concerned.

"Jared. Jake." Her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying.

"Hello, Miss Young." Jared greeted her with what almost passed as his normal tone of voice – neither of us wanting to make a big deal out of her appearance, in the off chance that it would embarrass her. But more likely embarrass ourselves. I had never seen Emily cry before.

"Emily." As soon as I was out of the car, coming around the trunk while Jared fumbled with the Connweller's bag, she threw herself at me. She came only to my torso, but not unlike Bells packed a mighty punch. I had never been hugged by Emily before, but my arms closed around her instinctively. She was sobbing against the _shirt_ and I secretly hoped that she ruined it. It had been bad enough with Kim questioning my manhood and the odd looks at the Salvation Army. "What happened?" I asked.

She said something against my abdomen that I couldn't quite make out. "Sorry, I think the sequins deflected your voice, Em." She half laughed, half sobbed while pulling her face away from me. I could feel Jared directly behind me, the sound of the driver's side door slamming behind him.

"It's Harry… my Uncle… he…" she couldn't bring herself to say it aloud, burying her face in the shirt again as her body vibrated in sorrow. The sweatshirt hood was hiding most of her face, but I put a palm on the back of her head and stroked slightly, unsure if there was more I should be doing. Jared, who came into my line of sight, arched a brow at my technique.

"I know." I said, not wanting her to have to scramble further for an explanation. "Lea—er, Sam told us this morning. I'm really sorry, Emily." I felt like a total ass, realizing that I had never offered any sort of reasonable condolences to Leah. Who was sitting alone, unable to shift back to a human shape, with her father having just died. I was ashamed of myself.

At the mention of Sam's name, Emily pulled back again, running a backhand across her eyes. "Did he? He didn't even come home last night. Not even a call." I went still and then realized I needed to be doing something, so I continued to pat her head. That was not like Sam at all. It reminded me of the strange monotone of his mental voice earlier. Also not like Sam.

"Last night was a bit _crazy_." Jared offered behind me. "Between two new wolves and patrol, I'm surprised any of us have seen Sam. He's been doing his best interpretation of a candle with both ends burning."

"I know," Emily's response was watery. "But Sam has the Chevelle and I thought I could go up to the hospital with Billy. But he wasn't here." In the background, I could hear the phone ringing inside the house, an old rotary thing that had probably been installed when the house had been built. I ignored it.

"We're supposed to be on patrol, but I don't think Sam could fault us for bringing you up to the hospital. If you want a lift." Jared offered. With the way Jared drove, it would be an hour there and back.

"Would you?" Emily smiled at Jared and then up at me. "I'm just so… overwrought. I'm sorry I ruined your… shirt."

"I don't think that's possible. " I really didn't. Jared lifted the Connweller's bag behind Emily, raising a shoulder in query. _What are we going to do?_ I didn't have to share a brain to catch his meaning. "Why don't you take Emily, Jared? I have a couple of things to do around here before you get back." He dropped the bag on a lawn chair in the front yard as Emily unwound herself from my chest. I waved them off as the Cavalier moved out of sight, back onto the 101… with my keys.

I let the phone ring again as I dropped over the back fence of our yard into the Clearwater's backyard, bag in hand. As the place was a hotbed of wolves – literally – most of the windows were open. I looked into what I thought was Seth's room and found an empty bed. The next window was Leah's – a thin light colored wolf was waiting near the window, black eyes watching my approach. "You're going to have to phase back to help me, you know." The words were very matter of fact as I threw the plastic bag in through the window ahead of me. I heard something shatter and then the scent of fox urine strong enough to burn the inside of my nose. "Oh _shit_…"

"_You ASS_!" Leah was fast – her pelt dissolving into brown skin and spitting black eyes – as she grabbed something off the bedside table and threw it at my head. I moved just in time to avoid her alarm clock, which hit the wall with enough force to dent the drywall.

I had solved one of her problems – the inability to Phase – but at the expense of coating her in fox urine. I was never going to live this down – if I could survive Leah Clearwater's very warranted anger. I clenched for the next attack… that never happened. Opening an eye to see why she hadn't thrown anything else at me, I saw her sitting on the edge of her bed. I averted my eyes as she was completely naked, something that was much more acceptable when it was Embry or Paul. "This has been the worst day of my life," she sighed and I had the sneaking suspicion that she was crying, although she didn't give any outward signs of breaking down.

Honestly, I didn't know how I felt about Leah Clearwater. I didn't know if I liked her or resented her for making this whole supernatural madness even harder than it had to be. Between Bells and Leah I was flailing around uselessly, unable to figure out what the right thing to do was. If she had been Embry, I would have punched her arm and shared the joke Paul had told me the other day. But did that work with girls? What the hell was I supposed to do with Leah Clearwater? I was only grateful that she wasn't privy to my mental fumbling before I decided to wing it.

"For what it's worth, I'm really sorry," I crossed the room – trying not to wince away from the overwhelming scent of fox urine – and sat on the edge of her bed, looking down at my feet. They were extraordinarily large feet and I hoped they didn't end up in my mouth. "About Harry." And I found I really was. It was hard to imagine Harry Clearwater being gone. Dad in a wheelchair was bad enough. The thought of something happening to him was something I didn't want to think about.

"While I applaud the bringing of gifts, Black, I can't vouch for your choice of perfumes." And like that, Leah Clearwater had snapped back into something that was more comfortable, more familiar. For a brief moment, I wondered if she was putting on her game face. That perhaps her admission of weakness had been unintentional.

"I don't know. I did end up with a naked girl." She snorted, before reaching for a nearby nightshirt. "A horrifically smelling naked girl." Something clicked. "You don't smell like wolf at all, though. But I don't remember smelling fox anywhere near Bella's house."

"If this was one of the options, no wonder." Leah lifted her arm and mimicked smelling herself. "I imagine that fox urine would be a bat signal to the Pack. _Here is a scent that doesn't belong_." She coughed. "Damn, how can you stand to be in the same room with me?"

But both of our heads snapped around in that moment, as her casual words reverberated between us: _Here is a scent that doesn't belong_. Could she be amplifying something that did belong? Charlie?

"Us." I said, a thumb to my chest. "Oh Jesus. She must be covering her scent with ours. None of us would think anything of smelling wolf around Bella's. But when we leave a place our scent gets weaker and eventually goes away."

"Except for Embry's," Leah offered almost as an afterthought.

"Yes, well, he doesn't bathe as often as the rest of us." She laughed and it was actually a nice laugh, a real one startled out of her. A breakthrough was on the tip of my tongue – but the sound of the old rotary phone ringing at my house broke my train of thought.

"You should get that. It's been ringing all morning." Something that only Leah and I would have heard over the regular morning sounds of La Push. "It might be your _girlfriend_."

***

_She's here_.

I took the back door off its hinges, shattering the window as it swung back against the wall. I didn't even have to enter to smell them – Cullen. The scent was bright, new and strong. Trumped only by the scent of Bella Swan's terror, tucked as she was between the refrigerator and cabinets.

I was going to rip out the engine of Bells' Chevy after this. Rip it out and put in the fastest engine I could find. Something that would never slow me up when she needed me, consigned to man-made steel because of the daylight. But first I was going to rip out the throat of the thing that had terrified her, my limbs quivering with the need to shift as rage and blood-lust pumped through me.

"Jake!" Bella's voice was high and panicky – two things I had never known it to be – as she palmed the refrigerator attempting to stand up. Her legs wobbled as she caught sight of Leah Clearwater behind me and I caught her before she fell backwards. Her arms wrapped around my neck, her face tucked into the divot above my collarbone as she held onto me for dear life. "_You came_." Her words were a sigh against my skin, her hands trying to pull me closer. "_Oh Jesus Christ, but there's a dead boy in my bed."_

Leah caught the words, easily, and gave me a dark look that I couldn't translate. She was remarkably in control of herself, but I was in danger of falling apart. I started prying Bella off of me, against her grasping _No, nos_. I took an elbow to the throat before Leah and I managed to peel her completely off me. I was shaking so hard, I thought my skin would shred around me at any minute – and there wasn't nearly enough room in the Swan's kitchen for a wolf and much of anything else. Let alone Bella.

Leah took hold of Bella's shoulders, stilling her with her strength. "Listen to me." Bella turned instinctively towards the commanding voice – a beacon of authority in the chaos around her. "If you care for Jake _at all_ you must go outside and into the cab of your truck. Lock the door and wait there for us. If… if we don't come back, you must go to Clallam County Hospital immediately." Bella was just lucid enough to be hesitant and Leah slapped her. Only the smell of vampire stopped me from attacking Leah. "Go to Sam. You must."

"Stay with her, Leah." I begged her as Bella fled the house – the sound of the driver's side door slamming behind her a second later.

"Fuck that, Black! I'm not letting you take on a vampire by yourself." She smiled a very dark smile that made me very glad she was playing for my side. "You need a bitch to understand one."

I was already up the stairs, the smell of rotting flesh and Cullen thick in the hall. I ran, not caring about Leah behind me, as I physically ached to get to my enemy.

And standing in the doorway of Bella's room - a dead boy, Bella's vomit and a discarded shirt all that was between us – I saw Alice Cullen for the first time.

She was small with a wealth of short black hair feathering her unnaturally white face. Her eyes were black – dark, inhuman and fathomless. And she was crouched for battle, hunkering low on the balls of her feet, her back arched as if ready to strike. Her posture stoked something primeval in me as adrenaline pulsed through my body. She didn't look surprised to see me, holding out the shredded shirt in her fist as if a toreador goading a bull.

I succumbed to a war fugue, my actions instinctual as she moved, almost crablike, near Bella's window. I matched her movements, coming into the room and leaving the door open for Leah. I had no idea if she was going to be able to shift and if she could shift, whether she could control herself. But I never took my eyes off of Alice Cullen. Neither of us looked ready to take the first swing. We were technically on neutral ground – Forks and its environs – and whoever struck first would break the treaty.

But I wanted to kill her. No reason to beat around the bush about it. The very fact that she lived, if that's what it was, offended me.

"The fox and the hound?" She queried, the words thick with venom.

I started forward slightly – goading – and Alice Cullen reacted in kind. Unfortunately, Leah took Alice's movement as the threat it wasn't quite and pounced. The lean grey wolf launched from behind me and caught the small vampire at the throat. The Cullen stumbled backwards against the sill attempting to dislodge Leah, connecting with a vicious uppercut that radiated off Leah's jaw but didn't make her budge. In a second, the two of them went tumbling out of the window – falling in a curtain of broken glass.

I followed immediately after them, catching my fall by grabbing the spruce as gravity pulled me down. The tree vibrated, but held my weight. Leah and the Cullen tumbled end over end on the gravel that fronted the yard, the vampire winning her freedom and crunching the bones in Leah's front leg with her teeth as she caught a mouthful of the twisting wolf. Leah whimpered, the two forms disappearing in the overgrown bushes.

I catapulted myself off the spruce, sending off a bowshot of needles as I dropped down behind the Cullen. As she went for the kill, I grabbed her head – tendons and muscles in my arm contorting and shifting as I held her away from Leah's throat. She hissed, gripping Leah in the stone vice of her own arms. "I will break your neck if you don't release the wolf."

"Then we are at an entente. For if you don't release my head, I will kill the wolf."

We hung there, suspended, for long moments while one of us moved to spur the other. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done, refraining from crushing her head while she bore Leah in her undead talons. But my speed had startled the leech. I could sense that in her smell and wariness. She was assessing me: how quickly I could shift, how likely I was to kill her.

The Cullen released Leah first. I took a calming breath before I released my grip on her head. The leech was fast, but no faster than I was. The realization hit the Cullen in the same moment she backed gracefully away from Leah.

And then I heard the sound of Jared's Caprice. _Reinforcements_. I arched a brow, watching the speed-fuzzed shape of the Cullen glance between the '53 Chevy and the on-coming car. She never really took her eyes off of me – the biggest of all threats. "You shouldn't have come back, _blood-sucker_."

"This has only just begun, _dog_." I let her go – the only reason Alice Cullen survived to fight another day – and mostly because of the girl locked in the cab of her Chevy and the convulsing Leah Clearwater.

Sam Uley was going to kill me.


	14. Chapter 14 Bella

Only by the grace of a numismatic convention, the Olympic Inn's aversion to updating what was a very serviceable (albeit avocado green) hotel room and _my_ aversion to being stabbed by an aging King Koil was I able to avoid spending my last night in Forks in the same room as Renée and Phil.

Despite the wide open intermediary door – one of the _multitude_ of stipulations attached to my own room, another being the two officers in the lobby – I was reveling in the closest thing to freedom I had experienced in the past two days. At least until Renée needed to convince herself once more that I was safe by walking into my room unannounced, sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at me. I _could _have assured her (if not myself) that being in my direct presence was the least safe place to be, considering. But the word _vampire_ just didn't carry as much cache as it should have. Certainly not enough to actually make it past my throat under the weight of Renée's eyes.

Which was why I had been in the shower for the past hour. You could do a number of things in a shower I'd discovered. There were the usual things like shaving legs, washing hair and brushing teeth and the downright inspired such as the game of solitaire I was playing on the floor with the shower running behind me. As Phil was currently on watch, I knew he would never come into the bathroom nor would he question the length of my shower.

With Charlie's house under yellow police tape, a prescription I didn't need for Valium and a couple of stitches on my scalp that I probably needed two days ago – I was going to Jacksonville. Duration unknown.

Obviously this was not the best of possible outcomes. For anyone. However, I had been unable to talk to Charlie before he called Renée. Nor had I been able to talk to Renée before she _and _Phil had taken the next available flight to Seattle. Mid-March apparently a slow time for the minor leagues. I didn't know what to say to makes things better – if that was even possible – and once Charlie was sure that what I had to tell him didn't feature Mike Newton in any way, shape or form he had become very hard to talk to. Somehow I couldn't figure out how to drop the word _vampire_ in a way that wouldn't automatically have me committed or immediately implicate the Cullens. I was at my wit's end and the last time I recalled seeing Jacob had been in the company of Leah Clearwater. Over the appearance of whose shredded nightshirt I had been questioned for nearly two hours.

No one had, obviously, made the connection between the "unidentified animal artifacts" found in the splintered window frame and the appearance of Jacob. Emily, my first sight upon waking up at the hospital after my brain apparently short circuited, filled in the gaps in my memory. Jacob had tried – rather unsuccessfully – to coax me into opening the locked doors of the truck and was seated on the flatbed when the Forks PD arrived, responding to a phone call regarding a "couple of people and a dog" tumbling out of Chief Swan's second story window. As Jake didn't have a scratch on him and could give a reasonable account as to his appearance on the scene – namely me – he had been relegated to a "person of interest" although not a "suspect." But there was that unspoken _yet_ lingering.

As for Mike Newton… I was horrified, but strangely removed from what had happened to him. I couldn't remember much of anything. Immediately after my questioning Charlie told me that my backpack had been found just outside of Mike's Suburban near a blocked drainage grate. My books were ruined. The last place I remembered seeing it had been the last time I had worked at the Olympic Outfitters. I don't know why he didn't just wait until my Saturday shift to remind me I had left it behind. _Oh God, Victoria had been so close. If I hadn't gone to Jacob's…_ I squelched the thought with an ace of diamonds.

In deference to my room being the first homicide crime scene Forks had had since 1968, once I was discharged from the hospital Renée, Phil and I took up residence at the Olympic Inn – of the previously mentioned avocado green decor. We were under 24 hour deputy surveillance from Forks. Charlie, meanwhile, had established a cot at the Station. I would have traded with him in a heartbeat. Renée was a mess. I had a headache from keeping up the pretense of being emotionally centered when I was anything but. And admitting that the constant surveillance from the Forks PD was less intrusive than the Dwyer Front was saying something.

There had been meetings with the Principal of Forks High who was more than willing to let me test out of the remaining three months of school instead of transferring in Jacksonville because of my GPA. And a string of questionings with the Staters who were heading up the investigation as by virtue of hosting the scene of the crime Forks' Chief of Police was compromised. Claiming a headache that was slowly becoming real, Renée had agreed to my suggestion for an early Sunday night. And by virtue of having only wrested one change of clothes from the house Phil had agreed to a closing of the gate, so to speak, the first time he had seen me in underwear. But only after 9pm. Our flight – the one I didn't want to be on – was a mid-day out of SeaTac, so we had a long drive southeast the next morning.

I turned up a six of hearts, my back to the water pipes that were doing their valiant best. Contrary to what I had told Renée, I was filled with an intense, nervous energy that sent shivers radiating out from my abdomen. It was almost as if my body were in full anticipation – every nerve ending tripped and stimulated. It was the queerest feeling I had ever experienced.

There were a number of possible causes.

The fear of being murdered by Victoria – which a carload of deputies, one teenage werewolf pack and one mother and stepfather were no deterrent against.

The kick to the gut I'd received when one of Charlie's deputies had handed me a black plastic bag of items from my room that had been cleared for my use. On the top of the bunch Edward's perfect, pale face staring out of a Ziploc bag coated in dust and smelling of Jacob.

And that was the worst of it. I couldn't stop thinking about Jacob Black. The smell of his skin, his easy wit, the indentation at the base of his throat, the shape of his mouth. But mostly the fact that Leah Clearwater had been with him. Beautiful, confident Leah Clearwater. _In a nightshirt_, my mind filled in, quite unhelpfully. Quite outside of Leah Clearwater's predilection for leaving her clothes behind – which was not uncommon among La Push's residents lately – my aching mind finally caught up with my subconscious. "She must be a wolf, too." I said the words aloud, shuffling a five of clubs I'd flipped earlier from the junk pile over to a six of diamonds. For some reason, the thought didn't make me feel any better. "So not only is she better endowed and extraordinarily good looking, now she gets to hang out with them," _Jake_, my mind amended, "without the handicap of random dead bodies and two left feet." I took a moment to look at myself in the floor length mirror – coated with something that stopped it from misting in the steamy bathroom – and sighed. Although the heat from the shower had put some color on my face, I was still hopelessly average. Dark eyes, a lean pale face and wet hair that curled as it dried. Edward's face, almost mockingly, stared out of the Ziploc I had also dragged into the bathroom. _Not even good enough for a sort of human, eh? _the dark gold eyes seemed to say even through the plastic, _How could you have ever expected me to stay with you?_ Were his eyebrows raised in silent, quiet humor? I had never noticed that before.

I was seriously considering trashing the bag. It was bad enough to have _actual_ people looking at the mismatched couple in the 3"x5" photograph and not be surprised he had escaped without Edward's perfect image wanting to do the same. And where was he anyway? Certainly not in Los Angeles. And certainly not in Forks where I was inadvertently amassing a small army to clean up his messes. And doing a piss poor job of it. _I am only one _human_ girl. How the hell am I going to finish this thing?_

A knock on the door abruptly broke my reverie. "How long are you going to be in there?" _Renée_. Obviously the changing of the guard had occurred while I was locked in the bathroom.

"Almost done," I yelled out, scraping the deck of cards and plastic bag with Edward's remains into the trashcan under the sink. The empty bag accepted them easily. I made sure to re-wet my hair before turning off the shower head and grabbing a towel. Unsurprisingly, Renée was waiting for me, although unlike other times she was in a floaty peach skirt and wearing make-up.

"What's the occasion?" I was obviously less prune-like than my hour shower would have led one to believe. I didn't miss Renée's telling look. She thought I had been crying. _Great_.

"Dinner. Phil and I thought we'd take you down to Mill Creek for a late dinner." I winced, hoping it didn't look as fake as I felt. "Does your head still hurt?" Renée's voice, usually soft, had also slowed in deference to my circumstance. It was extremely annoying.

"Yeah. I don't think it's my sinuses," I said quickly, surprising myself by giving an alternate explanation for the long shower. Renée was simultaneously relieved and disappointed, her face caught between the two extremes. "I thought I would just finish up my clothes and then go to bed." I was allowed to the washer/dryer – as it was just down the hall. "But you and Phil should get something to eat."

Seventeen distinct emotions warred across her face, which was as open as mine – although I'd had some practice with necessary deception – before she came to a decision. "Will you be alright by yourself?" I couldn't believe they were actually leaving me and had to fight down the urge to grin.

"Of course. Not much trouble between here and the washing machine." Except for the phone, which I planned to use to call Jacob Black.

"Yes. Not with Officer Bower just down the hall." It would almost be galling if it weren't predicated on Renée's belief that a homicidal maniac was running loose through the streets of Forks trying to get at me… or my friends. Which was actually true. I had to remind myself that she _did_ trust me.

"Wow, full service." I quipped, not sure what the appropriate response _should _be. Officer Bower in no way – unless he was of supernatural bent, which in Forks was not unknown – was a serious deterrent to Victoria the Human Slayer.

"Your father and I are worried about you." She looked as if she was going to delve deeper, for Renée anyway, into the situation. I could not handle discussing this with my mother. So I cut her off at the head.

"I know. Worried enough to loan me some Tylenol maybe?" Twenty minutes, two extra strength Tylenol and a promise to keep my cell phone in my pocket later, I was alone. So I did what any young adult would do when her parents were away: I called a boy.

"Miss Swan, to what do I owe the honor?" I had no idea who had answered the phone, but he knew who I was and wasn't Jacob. The feeling of anticipation heightened until it was almost palpable. Was it excitement?

"Is Jake there?"

"As a matter of fact, he's not. Can I leave him a message?"

"He's not with Leah Clearwater is he?" The words were out of my mouth before I had even realized I was going to say them. I physically clamped a hand over my mouth, but of course I couldn't take it back. "Don't answer that. I don't know why I said that."

The voice on the other end of the line laughed, but not unkindly. "He was, actually. Are you sure you don't want to leave a message? I know he would have liked to have taken your call."

_I would have liked that, too_. "No. I'll… I'll try to reach him from Jacksonville."

"So you're really leaving?" There was a note in the voice of almost ironic disbelief.

"It's not like I have a choice…" My voice reached for a name.

"Embry," he offered. "It's Embry."

"It's not like I have a choice, Embry." I ground my teeth and the sound carried through the line. "Apparently, I'm just a pawn in this game."

He was quiet for a second and I thought he might have hung up. "You know that pawns can be promoted, right?"

As a matter of fact, I didn't. I laughed though, it was the first time in two days. "I think my chances for promotion have passed me by. I'm just an ordinary pawn for life."

"Good." I could feel his smile through the line and I had no idea how I had just pleased him. I barely knew the guy. "When you get back," he said the words as blithely as if I had the return ticket in hand, "I'll teach you about discovered checks. I think you'll find the lesson important."

"It's a date." One that I may never keep, but I couldn't say no to the guy. "Anyway, just let Jake know I called, ok?"

"Absolutely."

Jake must be the hardest person in the world to get a hold of. I was going to have to get him a cell phone. I paused mid-thought, grabbing for the complimentary bag I had stuffed my dirty clothes into. _You almost sound like this is going to happen_. I knew what I did want – but I couldn't say it aloud. Vocalizing it would make it real, would leech out yet more of the glimmer of my doomed infatuation with Edward Cullen. It would make me a liar.

I nodded at Officer Bower, stationed between the elevator and the fire escape, before going into the laundry room. It was a small room, empty except for some cobwebs and a stray fabric softener sheet. After I fed my clothes into the washing machine along with a couple of dollars in change, I walked to the window and looked out over Forks. _So this is the…_ I narrowed my eyes as I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I thought about calling for Officer Bower – nighttime being the right time for Victoria – but couldn't find the voice to lead him into a sure death. Instead, typical of my inability to scrape up even the ghost of self-preservation, I palmed off the lights. In the dark, I took in the parking lot one floor below through the periodic orbs of lot lighting. It took a good ten minutes before I saw anything again, the sound of my jeans in the washing machine a watery gurgle in the background.

I almost broke the window trying to winch it open. Jacob Black – the chocolate brown wolf version – was in the parking lot below me.

"_Jacob!"_ I couldn't yell, Officer Bower would hear me down the hall, so I tried to throw half-whispers across the lot. Yeah, it was the best I could come up with. Apparently, I had also simultaneously tried to project my voice with the judicious application of jazz hands. It was the movement that caught Jake's attention. I could see my chances of competing with the Lady Clearwater sinking by the instant. _Jazz hands?_ Maybe it was an evolutionary prerogative that Victoria was seeking to terminate me.

He disappeared into the darkness beyond the lot before coming around a handful of parked cars human shaped, close enough that I was sure he could hear me. I swallowed my breath – good lord he was good looking painted in half-light and shadows. "_Bells_!" I offered him a smile that I was sure was dorkiness personified, my heart was pounding despite the barrier between us of a screen, cinder blocks and a Honda Civic. "_What room are you in?"_

"_212. But you won't get past the Forks PD. There's an Officer in the lobby and one down the hall."_ Hopefully one who wasn't headed this way now, clued in by the lights dimming through the doorway.

Jacob Black offered me a look that was part disdain and part arrogance. And so sexy I wondered if I was actually looking at the same boy who had mocked my powers of movie selection. "_Just make sure the window's open. See you in ten."_

I didn't care if he had come directly from Leah Clearwater. He was here.

I flipped the lights back on, closing the window and checking the wash cycle – I had an hour with this old monster – before returning to the hall. I waved to Officer Bower as I returned to my room. He looked extremely bored and I hoped he didn't decide to walk too close to the room. I had spent last night watching _Mr and Mrs Smith _on the room's television with Phil, Renee and Officer Thomas. Rosie (Officer Thomas) had been incredibly critical of Angelina Jolie's weapons handling.

As it turned out, Werewolves – even in human form – can jump really high. I had all the lights except for the desk lamp turned off so that no one would see the scramble through the second story window. My room faced the back of the building, towards the 101 and its intermittent traffic and a periodic squad car with beacon. But as it was, there was no scramble. Jake made the jump from the ground to the exterior sill, hanging there before pulling himself through the small opening. He was extraordinarily wide, so I worried that he was going to stick. But he didn't.

Of course, I then realized that he wasn't wearing any clothing. I wasn't so sheltered that I had never seen a penis in my life, I had seen Jacob's on First Beach several days ago. But had I really _seen _it? Because I was suddenly having first thoughts, having not quite graduated to second. _Was he going to fit? _Apparently I had decided to act on my wants, my mental question not really surprising me. My mouth went dry, my eyes drawn to his sex like the lodestone it was. I swallowed, trying to lubricate my throat and then took a deep breath. His eyes sought mine as mine traveled up his body.

"Since you're obviously showing me yours, I'll show you mine." I could _feel _the weight of his eyes on me as I crossed my arms, grabbing the hem of my tank and pulling it upwards and over my head. I wasn't wearing a bra and the March air was cold against my skin, my nipples tightened instinctively. The incandescent light of the table lamp was drawn to the sharp angles of Jacob's chest – and my eyes, weak under the peer pressure, followed suit. I couldn't meet his eyes anyway, unsure of whether he was going to follow suit. _I'm no Leah Clearwater_, I thought wryly remembering the washboard stomach_._

"Bella…" His voice was shaky as he said my name, both hands fisted at his sides. "You're leaving."

"Not at the moment, no." I gave him a languid look under the umbrella of my lashes, hoping some of the heat of my body was visible in the look, that it didn't come off as foolish as I feared it might. I was quite a novice, but I wanted the fulfillment of what Jacob's tongue had promised. I hooked my thumbs in the elastic waistband of the lavender boy shorts, peeling them down with what I thought was a lamentable amount of panache. I licked my lips to moisten them and Jacob groaned deep in his throat. His gaze dropped to my hips and lower, lingering there a long time. I really wished I had a washboard stomach to offer instead of the slightly curved line of my abdomen.

"But I… we can't." Jacob looked as if it pained him to say the words. "It's not idle boasting when I say that I'm too hot to carry a condom." His frank words both aroused and scared me slightly. He drew a finger under the negligible weight of my breast. "That is what you're asking me: if I want to have sex with you." There was no question in his voice, although his tone was impossible to decipher, his thumb tracing and then flicking at my nipple. Embarrassment colored my face, the blush blooming over my chest and torso. He arched a brow, so uncharacteristically Jacob, that I was momentarily at sea. "Although you have yet to ask me anything."

He was going to make me ask out loud. There was more there, something else, but it was beyond me to figure it out. Not when I was completely naked in a half-dark room with Jacob Black. _It's not like you're ever going to see him again_, the nasty part of my mind hissed, the one still stinging from Edward, yet wedded to him. And my heart contracted, seizing fiercely. _Never see Jacob again? Never?_ I couldn't endure it. "Firstly," I began, my voice slightly breathless "I've been on birth control since I was fourteen years old." I was babbling as my body pooled and fired beneath this, watching the subtle changes in Jacob's face as he listened to my prattle. "And secondly, Jacob Black would you do me the honor of laying with me in this queen bed?"

"Just laying?" He asked, the corner of his mouth twitching.

I nodded, taking his warm hand in mine and leading his loose body towards the bed. I could feel his eyes on my back… and lower. I was suddenly self-conscious. Why was he looking at my backside like that? Was something wrong with it? I tried to look and only caught Jake's dark eyes. I tripped, caught, and his hands went to my waist– quite possibly permanently branding it – lifting me to stop me from falling. "I think you _do _need to lay down, Bells. You're a walking hazard." I narrowed my eyes as he dropped me on the bed, following a second later.

We laid next to each other for long moments before I realized I was going to have to make the next move. "This isn't a very comfortable bed," Jake commented, his voice husky. Perhaps he was not as immune as he thought.

"No." I agreed on a sigh. "But maybe… maybe if you roll onto your side?" I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. I failed miserably when my voice cracked. He followed my suggestion instantly, rolling over to face me, I turned in kind.

"Well, the scenery is better…" Jake admitted. "Although I think this bed is hopeless."

"You're telling me. I've had to sleep on it the last two nights."

"Bells," he drew a hand to my face, warm and solid. He had my complete attention. "Why are you leaving? You won't survive without me." His words were so matter of fact that he startled an agreeing, _No,_ out of me before I could stop it. I was pretty sure I had suffered a serious brain injury, unable to stop my thoughts from pouring out of my mouth.

I sighed, while he seemed relieved that I acknowledged that I couldn't live without him. I think we both meant something different. "Despite our _unusual _circumstances, Jake, we're still just teenagers. The supernatural aside, this _is _happening in the real world. In the real world where Charlie is the Chief of Police and responsible for prosecuting my monsters."

Jake was quiet for a moment, drawing his thoughts together with his deep breaths. "What if… what if Charlie knew about us?"

I didn't think it was possible for my eyes to get any larger. "Jacob Black, I can guarantee you that going up to him and telling him you were in bed naked with his daughter is tantamount to suicide."

He laughed, something resembling relief softening the sharp angles of his face. "_Tantamount to suicide_?" He repeated the words, enunciating them in a haughty tone that made my brow arch of its own volition. "You know what, Miss Swan?" I was afraid to ask. "You talk too much."

"I thought you wanted me to talk?" I motioned towards my very naked, very white body.

"I changed my mind," was all he offered before rising to his knees with a grace that I envied and slightly distrusted. His body was unbelievably hot as he leaned over mine, using my surprise to claim my mouth with his tongue. I didn't have time to close my eyes – I probably wouldn't have anyway, contrary to what was expected – and watched his lashes casting elongated shadows across his high cheek bones. Until I succumbed to the insistent pressure of his mouth on mine, my eyelids sinking as he deepened the kiss. I tentatively offered my own tongue in response and he groaned, every nerve ending on my body fizzing in response.

I had never been kissed like this before: wild, hungry, generous. He plumbed the very depths of my mouth, laving my teeth with his tongue. A free hand traced the elongated curve of my reclined torso, tracing my stomach, finding my hip bone and burning his name into it. I laid my palms against the smooth skin of his torso, quite surprised by the tensile strength of his muscles beneath the skin. He was hard, but not unyielding. In fact as my cooler hands fanned out along his skin, his stomach twitched in response. His cock mimicking the action as the base of my palm accidentally came across the silky head. He broke off his mouth to gasp air. "_Touch me again_," he managed – his voice as thick as my throat at his command.

I dropped my hands, his body arching to facilitate my seeking palms. He was very long, nearly a foot taller than me and in positioning myself, my freshly shaved leg slid between his legs, against the fur of his sex. For a second I couldn't decide who had groaned with the unexpected contact. He seemed to have forgotten my Quest, kneading the breasts that were now better positioned with a ferocity that turned my skin electric and forcing my legs closed in an attempt to contain the insane wetness there. His mouth followed his hands, which in turn traveled over hips and thigh. His finger teased and tried the constriction of my legs, apparently keyed to his touch as I opened hesitantly but definitely.

I remembered the feeling of his fingers inside me, arching against his hand as I wanted that again. "_Now_." I hadn't realized I had said it out loud, Jacob's laugh vibrating just beneath my left breast.

"Whatever you want, Vampire Princess." Not about to gainsay me, he parted the folds of my sex and filled me with his middle finger before I had time to ponder the strange nickname he'd imparted on me. I was neither a vampire nor a princess – but I was on fire. There was something in me that was wild and receiving, that coveted this closeness, the friction and wetness of coupling. I had first recognized it with Edward, whose prim playacting had unleashed a torrent of sensuality in me that I had been embarrassed about. But Jacob seemed to relish and actively promote the same thing. And he was doing a damn fine job of it.

Bucking against his finger, my body was undulating of its own accord, attempting to achieve the wet clenchiness of release that Jacob had brought about two days ago – with his tongue. The memory alone was enough to flood my body, wetting Jacob's finger. "You are so wet," he marveled and I was pleased that he was pleased. Apparently wetness was a good thing? "I want to be inside you," he said against my hip, his body stocky but remarkably limber. "Are you sure?"

"_I want… too…_" Although the mind was willing, the connection between brain and mouth was short-circuited by the sensation of Jacob's finger inside me, his mouth on my skin. I was only capable of randomly strung together words. If he didn't understand me, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. Although I wasn't sure I wanted to move, wanted to stop what he was doing.

He pulled out of me against my better judgment, which I vocally complained about. Nudging my legs wider apart – his hips were lean, but he was large everywhere – and his finger in his mouth. My eyes, dilated and watery as they were widened. "What are you doing?" It came out more shrilly than I'd intended. I was having trouble breathing in anything less than a pant.

"Tasting you."

"Stop licking your finger and fuck me!" I nearly screamed at him, my legs tightening around his hips, my hands fisting at his chest. "I'm going to die and if you don't do this I'm going to kill you, too."

His cock throbbed, viscerally, against my thigh where he was suspended, his eyes narrowing to darkest slits. Whatever I had said – now lost to my frantic mind that would say anything – had focused him absolutely. If he had been teasing a moment ago, he was fully engaged now. Both hands on my hips, he drew his sex against the opening of my slit once, twice. I didn't think he could be physically hotter, but I had found the source of his heat. Once more he slid against my opening and then slowly, slowly started to enter.

It was the most intimate thing I had ever experienced. He was so close to me – literally inside the sheath of my sex – but yet still distinctly not me. The fine tension in his shoulders and jaw were the only outward signs of his carefulness. He didn't want to hurt me, a constant litany with these supernatural types, the sentiment both awesome and irritating. If we were to begin as we meant to carry on, I couldn't imagine a lifetime – _was I _seriously _pondering lifetimes? What happened to rational Bella? _Eighteen_ year old Bella?_ - of holding back, of enforced delicacy. It would almost be like only using 10% of your brain – _are these the normal thoughts of someone in the midst of having sex?_ - so much wasted potential. Jacob's shallow stroking, gently working his way into me, wasn't enough. So on his next downward thrust, I pushed upward with my hips.

He was extraordinarily large, the fit tight.

A number of random thoughts filtered through my brain in that instant, perhaps all unsuitable for the moment. I wondered whether Jacob would ever grow a beard. I marveled at the thought that this was supposed to hurt, the first time, but I just felt the tightness. And then there was Jacob's "_Isabella_, you are so impatient," spit out with great effort as he tried to not give into instinct. He had never used my full name before – not even the first time I saw him on First Beach over a year ago. And he used it now to admonish me. I liked the way it sounded on his tongue.

"_Are you in pain_?" He asked, capturing my eye s and trying to glean the truth. He was very serious, which was why I felt so bad about the spontaneous laughter that ripped from my chest.

"I'm sorry," I apologized as his eyes narrowed, a silent plea to his restraint in the face of my greed. I thought, _we are so perfectly suited, _and then lifted my hand to his jaw, using my thumb to trace the heavy bow of his lower lip. _Such fine lips_. "But I thought it was supposed to happen … I don't know … in sort of a frenzy?"

"A... _frenzy_?" He asked, testing the word out. He withdrew an inch and then pushed forward again. The movement actually caused goosebumps all down my arms. "Like this?"

I was only capable of a nod and he repeated the action countless times while my body softened and reshaped around him. I quite lost track of where Jacob ended and I began as I slowly began to unravel. There were a lot of things to feel and I tried to absorb them all, gathering and committing them to memory. After a while, all I could do was _feel_, moving in time to the chanting of my name and the slick heat of our bodies together. I wondered why I had never done this before as the first stirring of my orgasm – something I recognized under Jacob's tutelage – rose and then crested over me. Jacob followed some time afterward and we collapsed together, his body almost crushing me before he recovered enough to gather himself on his forearms.

I clung to him, unwilling to release my hold until my own senses returned. "Renee and Phil will be back soon."

"It's a good thing you're quiet, Bells. The cop has been past the door twice." I turned towards the sound of his voice, his dark eyes on me almost searchingly. I wish I knew what he was searching for.

"Are you serious?" I felt suddenly panicky as his words sunk in.

"I would never lie to you. Wolf's honor." His grin was slightly lop-sided, wholly Jacob. I kissed it which led to another ten minutes of tongue work that was very nice. I couldn't testify to my own abilities, but Jacob Black was a gifted young man. "Which is why I should tell you --"

I cut him off with my hands not wanting to ruin _this_ between us with seriousness. He pushed my hand aside as if it were nothing, although granting each finger a kiss in kind as he did so. "Which is why I should tell you that this _was _supposed to be a kidnapping mission. But I lost my pants somewhere."

I laughed against his chest, then sobered. "I can't run away with you, Jake."

"I know," he sighed and his voice was so serious, so adult that my heart twinged a little in response. "And La Push is not the place for you right now."

"You mean besides the fact that I'm obviously not Quieleute?" I joked, my arm white against his.

He kissed me once, powerfully and lingering. "You belong with me – regardless of what any_thing _thinks." I thought the choice of 'anything' very strange. "But there has been a lot of attention on La Push lately." I was too intelligent to miss his meaning.

"You mean someone thinks you are responsible for Mi-- er, the death?" I couldn't wrap my voice around Mike Newton's name. "That's ridiculous."

He gave me a look that made me feel very naive. "The Staters _aren't _Charlie, Bells. And while right now we're on Federal land, it looks like other agencies might get involved." My eyes widened in horror and I sank deeper against Jacob. "And Leah..." there was a dim hopelessness in the way he said her name. "I'm just not sure what's going to happen with Leah."

"What's wrong with Leah?" My voice was not kind to the name as it awkwardly fell off my tongue.

"She's..." He was going to respond when his head picked up from off the comforter so quickly his shadow left tracers. "I think your parents are back." I cast him a dark look that clearly said: _How can you tell?_ "I heard them talking to the cop down the hall." In a flurry of movement, he was out of the bed. I followed quickly after – quickly for me, anyway – and still felt like I was moving through molasses. I couldn't catch him. "I have to go. I'm not supposed to be here. But..." he paused in front of the window, turning towards me. "Think of me, Bells. My thoughts are on you. Always."

"Jacob!" He swung out of the window easily, releasing his grip on the sill as he dropped down two stories. I would have died trying even a portion of his crazy acrobatics.

He looked up, treating me with a grin that showed white teeth against dark skin. "Don't get yourself killed, either. It would break my heart," his voice cracked as he said the last. "Stay to bright places with lots of people until you come back."

He was gone before I realized I was probably in love with him.

**Summonses**

**Belém, State of Pará, Brazil**

From the_**Arauto da Ilha, **_Wednesday, March 15, 2006 (page 4):

For the third time in as many weeks, Marajo Park Rangers have come across the desiccated remains of the Island's native _bubalino_ (the region's indigenous water buffalo). Rafael Perez dos Santos, 32, a Ranger stationed at Chaves in the Northern part of the Island revealed that the latest fatality was a male specimen measuring 1.8m in height and weighing some 1100kg - roughly the size of a small vehicle. Found on the shore of the Para River, Perez dos Santos reports that while there is not yet suitable cause for an official necropsy as the cause of death does not appear to be bacteriological in nature, the deaths are troubling. "Time of death is difficult to pin point due to the rapid deterioration of bodies in the wet, humid environment of the Marajo. However, the carcass was in excellent condition due to its complete lack of blood."

Perez dos Santos notes that while "humans have been a significant threat to water buffalo, both through hunting and through habitat encroachment and fragmentation, Ilha de Marajos water buffalo have no natural predators." However, it has not been uncommon that poachers occasionally cull from the native _bubalino_ - primarily for their horns which are desirable for knife handle materials as well as reputedly an aphrodisiac on the Asian market.

"Despite talk of _bruxha_, a witch/vampiric figure in the area's native mythology, there is categorically no proof that it is anything more than superstition. This is not the first time water buffalo blood has been harvested, presumably for black market reasons."

***

The weather in Pará, like most of Northern Brazil in the first half of the year was overcast and humid. It wasn't actively raining as the _Ibis_ pulled into the harbor at Belem, but it was only a matter of time.

My arrival in Belém was nothing on the scale of the arrival of the Demeter into Tate Hill Pier although it felt as profound. It was the first time I had emerged from solitude on the Ilha de Marajo in three months and only because I had promised Carlisle I would contact him on something of a regular schedule. And I was following the rolling tide of weather North to South – as the rainy season dropped further and further from the equator. By the end of the year, I would be in Rio and possibly Isla Esme if I could stomach it.

If I was at Isla Esme in December, I would never return to Isabella Swan.

"_Nós devemos ser de encaixe em breve_, _senhor_," the _Ibis_' Captain notified me, coming onto the deck where I had been lounging in the white linen sport coat that never creased and a copy of Wednesday's _Arauto da Ilha_ . It required body heat to set in creases.

"_Obrigado_." My Portuguese was flawless – I had had decades to work on the intonation – although it was more mainland than Colonial.

_The Rich Albino speaks Portuguese like a native. _I tried not to ruin my charade of ignorance by grinning at the Captain's recycled thought. It was not the first time he had marveled over my attempts at his language. As for being delegated the 'Rich Albino,' it must have been an accepted nickname as I had caught the appellation on the minds of almost the entire crew at one time or another. "_It has been a pleasure to transport you from Soure. Will you need your bags delivered within the City_?"

"_I've taken an apartment at the Hotel Mangueira. If you could arrange to have my bags delivered there_?" The Hotel in question, located in Belem's old town, was one I had stayed in on my occasional visits to the port city. Of all its amenities, the most important was its relative obscurity. I could very well have Ana Paula Arósio or a President in the next room but would never know. And vice versa.

Esme would have known to direct letters to me in care of the Mangueira, an archaic form of communication that we both were more comfortable with than texting or electronic mail. Her letterhead always carried notes of her favorite perfume, Revillon's_ Carnet de Bal, _sadly no longer manufactured. I found that for the first time in six months, I was actually looking forward to a hot shower and the scent of home. I closed off the part of my mind that argued that home carried less the scent of _Carnet de Bal_ and more the strange citrus of freesias.

The apartment – a two bedroom affair that overlooked the mango lined streets – was ready when I arrived. The silk tweed hacking jacket from my traveling bags had been steamed and laid out for me as well as a bottle of _Cachaça_ that I would open and offer to the drain in the interest of perception. The same reason I would muss up the bedding in the morning and leave towels on the floor. Two of Esme's letters had arrived from New York and I read them twice before removing to the balcony to watch the storm break around me.

_Perhaps I worry overmuch about you, my love. But you are our special son and your absence causes us as much distress as remaining amongst us does you. Will our lives follow thusly: lifetimes guessed at in between the lines of your infrequent discourse? You asked me once if She was your only happiness. And I answer now surely if there is a G-d, He would not deign to remove it absolutely from your grasp. We _exist – _and by doing so are we not also G-d's children? Predation does not damn the lion. How should we presume to believe it does so us?_

Because of the rain, the streets were almost deserted and the usual blissful quietude of no thoughts beyond my own turned very quickly into a prison of my own devising. I was a creature of habit and my only habit of note was an inability to steer my thoughts away from one small, human girl far, far to the Northwest. The more I tried to forget her, the more I found myself fixated on her. The deep vein of red that ran through her dark hair. Every emotion that flickered in her expressive eyes. The heady freesia of her blood. I was becoming maudlin in my old age, an uncomfortable situation as sentimentality for one human was why I was in South America to begin with.

When I could no longer stand myself and with Esme's letters in the front left pocket of the hacking jacket, I took the Maybach out to the Café I sometimes frequented in Belem. The cacophony of voices – internal and external – around me was a welcome relief. I ordered a _cafezinho_ that I carelessly swirled around my mouth but did not swallow. The forty real I left under the saucer would negate any hard feelings of having not finished what was reputedly the best cup of coffee in Brazil. I was wearing a dark pair of sunglasses, the international currency of not wanting to be recognized, and outside of a few stares was generally ignored.

I absorbed the soap operas around me, the inner dialogues that focused on sex and money and human concerns that I understood rationally, but not quite emotionally. Not really, anymore. If not for my inhumanity, there lay an insurmountable river of time between myself and my _current_ contemporaries. There was such a gracelessness in modernity, a gauche unpackaging of self that made so many indelicate things acknowledged and thus permissible. Most horrifying to me was the glamor that the modern age had drawn around their vampires. How invulnerable man thought himself if his monsters were now gilded and tame. But truly, us damned thing were anything but.

When I caught the strains of _Clare de Lune_ overhead, I knew I had overstayed my welcome. Surrounding myself with the dim masses of humanity only took the edge off of my emptiness, worsened by the short moments of time when I had tasted so much more. Never had ambrosia been so bitter. I decided to walk back to the Hotel, heedless of the rain that would ruin my jacket.

I knew as surely as I was damned that I was miserable. Foraging on dim bovine and hiding among waterbugs and rain was only a half life at best. And who then was I serving best? Isabella? Perhaps. But the longer I stayed away from her the more I knew I could not do it indefinitely. She was my addiction, my fell weakness. A girl, more child than woman yet, who had stolen something I did not believe I had within me. I could only hope it was not the will to live.

I was soaking by the time I reached the overhanging eaves of the Hotel, the doorman alarmed at my sudden and haggardly appearance, although he recognized me at once. "Por favor, Sr. Cullen. **_Did you have a problem with your vehicle?_****"**

**The smile I offered him was nothing short of beatific. I had practiced it enough times to know so. "****_No, no. I just felt like a walk. Although_****," I fished the keys for the Maybach out of my pocket, the cell phone I'd nearly forgotten about vibrating against my hand as I did so, "****_perhaps you could have Leonardo retrieve it for me?_****" I did not have to ask twice. As I entered the lobby, my smile wilted under the anachronistic gaslight. I palmed the cell phone, realizing for the first time in months I actually had reception.**

**There was only one message in the cache, a picture mail from Alice. I was still angry about her eavesdropping, in a matter of speaking, in Isabella's affairs. I was not nearly as selfless as I would believe – or lead others to believe. I was angrier at Bella's ability to function without me, a single shadow form in Alice's visions. Laughing. ****_Living_****, I reminded myself. I was older, I was wiser than Isabella. I had made the right decision.**

**A decision that was sorely shaken a moment later when I opened Alice's message, expecting an innocuous shot of she and Jasper. Instead, I was treated to the eviscerated remains of Mike Newton.**

**_Come to me._**

**Nothing on earth could have stopped me.**


	15. Chapter 15 Jacob

There's something about the scent of warm motor oil and _Car Talk _on NWPR out of Port Angeles that that just works for me from the first time I held an 8mm hex wrench. The Regency TR-1 transistor radio that I'd mucked around with until its interior was barely recognizable to its creators was tuned to NWPR now – it could only get two stations – and somewhere between working the bolt on the underside of Sam's oil pan and changing his filter it had shifted over from talk to Hendrix.

I was thinking about Quilly and Leah Clearwater and Bells under the Chevelle, the clearance a tight fit even with the jack stands suspending the frame. I really needed a creeper, but unless I showed some artistic ability with duct tape and PVC – and stopped growing – there was a small chance that was going to happen anytime soon. Thankfully, someone had thrown out a scuffed but perfectly usable skateboard that I'd been using to get under the Rabbit. In the absence of Bells and any desire to do schoolwork, I had a hefty To-Do List. I was running through the more important entries: rounds with Seth in a few hours and the need to see if Leah was still alive (she'd given me a right hook earlier that had my brain swimming for a few minutes) when I heard Charlie's voice.

"Hey Jake, you in here?" The heavy steel door to the shop – something I'd scrounged from warehouse odds and ends – popped open a second later with a solid _thunk_, bringing a sharp gust of cold air along with Chief Swan. I caught a bead on him, frosted in melting snow, from underneath Sam's Chevelle. He was in red check plaid with a two-way clipped to his belt that starting hissing as soon as he stepped inside.

"Under the car," I said a second later through a ton or so of steel and Hendrix riffing on _Purple Haze_, allowing the fiction of discovery to linger between us. To tell the truth, I could hear Charlie's car – the distinctive stutter and purr of the Ford's engine from Main Street, giving me about fifteen minutes to think about what he wanted. Or more specifically, what he wanted to say to me. I was precariously balanced on an old skateboard that doubled as a roller board, elbow deep in the sweet musk of warm motor oil. "Let me just finish draining this and I'll be right out. 'Course, I could just tell you that Dad's at the Council House." _Like he was every Sunday night_. From my unique view – and quite able of changing oil with my eyes closed, only a step off from looking away – I saw him close the door behind him, stamping worm brown workboots on the faux grass mat that sprouted "Welcome" in plastic flowers. Mom's touch – something that unexpectedly wrenched my guts.

"_Damn_, I knew that. I should have called before coming over," he admitted with a note of self-depreciating that said he was probably laughing at himself. The two-way popped again and Charlie thumbed the volume down. "This Sam's?" he asked _almost _casually. Charlie was good, and I'd always taken him for face value, but now that I could smell his body almost rewriting his script, I was able to answer in kind. But warily.

"Yeah. I've clocked about a hundred hours on it. Of course, none of them paid." He moved closer to the Chevelle, and I could smell tobacco and Bells' detergent. I felt the last in my stomach. I am a sorry excuse for a wolf, truth be known. Bells was probably touching down in Jacksonville soon. I wondered if she was going to call me. The possibility one of the reasons I had turned down a run to Emily's for dinner. Five cans of Chef Boyardee was a cold substitute. I was still hungry.

"You're what… sixteen now?"

"Yeah. Almost seventeen, though." I threw that in there just in case he was making a point about Bells – who was a year and some change older than myself. I still hadn't quite gotten a handle on where he was going.

Charlie laughed. "You and Bells. Always trying to grow up too fast." The warm motor oil had tapered down to the thinnest of filaments. The pan was almost empty. "But you're old enough for a work permit? You could clock a couple of _paid_ hours if you wanted."

I'd thought about it. God knows I'd thought about it, particularly after we'd broken into Bells' college money for the bike. Or every morning spent digging through the Salvation Army bins. Before shifting took away all my free time. "Between Dad and school … I don't know… it would be nice, but I don't think I have the time. And you know how he feels about education." As if shifting were only a cultural prerequisite! Dad and I had starting fighting about school. Seriously life would be easier if I had just one less thing to worry about.

"Of course." Charlie's voice was closer as he stood near the hood, the two-way whining like a guitar too close to the amplifier. The pitch hurt my ears. "Sorry about that. I have to carry this thing on me all the time, but I think it's possessed. It does this every time I'm in the Cruiser." For all his being Chief of Police in Forks, Dad and I knew Charlie was a Luddite at heart. I had to show him how to program numbers in the Sanyo Forks PD had sprung for from Sprint. Apparently, the two-way was some kind of a compromise, technology circa 1960 which was more Charlie's speed.

"It sounds like its catching feedback from something in the garage," I said, using my legs to walk the skateboard out from under the Chevelle, Charlie moving back to let me out. Ironically now standing in front of the contraband bikes, although under the cover of a tarp. As soon as he cleared the driver's side door, the two-way settled down. Definitely something in the garage. "I can take a look at it if you want," I offered, adding quickly, "No charge, of course."

"At the very least I can spring for dinner, especially since _Emeril_ is out," Dad had yet to _not _burn anything he touched. If water could burn, he would have been the one to do it. "But if I have to program numbers into this thing, I'm petitioning for Styrofoam cups and string. I was just getting used to the beeper – _Jesus_ Jake, don't you have a coat?" It took me a second: thin t-shirt, a pair of worn (and stained) khakis always a wear short of the rag bag (especially since I was doing laundry) and no heating in the garage. My barometer was off, obviously, but it was probably a notch over 40° in my shed. That was probably too cold to be out here for non-wolves. _Shit_.

"Of course," I responded, although not mentioning that it didn't really fit. Not by a long shot. "Now that you mention it, it _is _a little cold out here." I remembered the snow in Charlie's hair. I came off the skateboard with an economy of movement that Bruce Lee would have envied – except for the part where I cut my forearm on the portable light I'd attached to the chassis. The hot bulb sizzled and popped with a glassy _ting_ as fragments ricocheted off the under carriage and wheels. "Lost the bulb. Can you pull the extension cord out of the socket?"

Charlie looked around for a minute, following the neon orange trail and jerked on the plug. "Sam needs new tires. Tread's worn," he said absently.

"Yeah," Sam had worn the tires into the ground at least twice. "But Goodyear's are almost a grand at Gilmore's. These are actually retreads."

"You know someone local who does retreads for passenger vehicles?" Charlie asked, somewhere behind me. Most retreads were for bigger tires – commercial trucks, military vehicles, off-roading – so I could understand his surprise. Every word that came out of his mouth was punctuated with frosty exhale.

"Yeah, this guy outside of Port Angeles. They're usually 20-50% cheaper than wholesale. I needed tires for the Rabbit and Jared's Caprice – so I bargained for a discount."

"All the treads identical?"

That was a weird question. Most treads were by brand name and model number. "I… guess. I've never really looked that closely to tell the truth. But if they're using a mould, they'd all be identical, right? And I can't imagine Louie putting in the outlay for a second design." Charlie looked pensive. At some point in our conversation he had been rerouted from Charlie to Chief Swan. _Tires?_ I filed it away with my belief that Victoria was scenting and how evil I thought Edward Cullen was. It didn't look like today was going to reveal a lessening of worries. "Why do you ask?" I tried the question as nonchalantly as I could.

"When you got to the house, Jake, you didn't see anyone else did you?" During my questioning by the police, I had never once revealed the presence of Leah Clearwater _or_ Alice Cullen. Leah was obvious. Alice, however, was more complicated. Outside of the logistics of the thing – she _did_ fly up through the window, there was never going to be a palm print on the door knob – there was the chance that since the Treaty was for all intents over there was no incentive for the Cullens not to reveal our secrets. The burden of proof was on them, but I personally believed that the female Cullen was in as much trouble with her Alpha as Leah and I were with Sam. Forks was their safe haven.

"No." Charlie seemed to relax significantly. "But you think someone else was there?"

"I _know _someone else was there. My gut says someone else was there. But all the techs could find was dog hair. But that's between you and me, Jake. I'm not technically on the case."

I felt like someone had just walked over my grave. Dog hair – or wolf hair? "But they can't seriously think that some dog broke into the house and did _that_ to Newton, right?" I tried to give my voice all the irony it needed to have, if I didn't know that some animals were very capable of walking and talking and opening doors. He was quiet for a moment, eyes on the tread of Sam's tires. "But you think they have a suspect," I said, reading him as well as I could.

"Did you know that Sam Uley has a record?"

"He does?" As a matter of fact, I didn't. But Sam was almost four years older than I was, there were probably a lot of things about him I didn't know. "What does Sam have to do with this? I _know_ he wasn't there."

"It doesn't matter, Jake. It was a DUI from 2002. I remember picking him up myself just outside of Forks in that Pinto his Dad had left on the lawn. Mrs. Uley asked us to press charges instead of coming down to bail him out. He never put a foot wrong again – unless you count those weeks he disappeared."

"They think Sam Uley killed Mike Newton?" Saying it out loud didn't make it any less ridiculous than it sounded in my head. He was probably the only person who _wasn't_ at the Swan house that day. "They didn't even know each other."

"On the basis of a receipt. Apparently he bought a soda at the Olympic Outfitters that morning." Driving Bells to work. "A receipt, a shirt and no alibi for the nigh Mike was killed."

"That's ridiculous! He was with Leah Clearwater." Ok, I realized a second later how incriminating that sounded – particularly coming from me. Even Charlie knew about the soap opera that was Sam and Leah and Emily.

"If he's trying to protect Emily, you might tell him that only the issue of jurisdiction has kept him out of a cell thus far. He can't protect her from jail."

***

Eight hours after Bells dragged my heart off to Jacksonville and forty minutes after Charlie Swan as good as pinned the Newton kid on Sam, Lincoln Jamie showed up.

Dad and the Council had put Jamie through State college. As he wasn't on the Council and had somehow evaded the genetic Russian roulette of lycanthropy – he had no idea he was walking into a wolves' den. Literally.

There was something ominous about the blue and white Crown Vic as it slowed on Quileute Street, the flash of the signal as it made the sharp turn onto the front yard. I had the distinct impression this was no social call, a thought reflected in the tight lines of Embry's face, uncharacteristically serious as he leaned against the wall on his haunches. I don't know how Rachel and Rebecca ever survived in the cramped quarters, my bulk crowding the room. Embry caught the crunch of gravel at the same time I did, his brow arching as we made eye contact. I could read his face as well as looking into a mirror, _Already?_ I had told him as much as I knew as soon as I'd dropped Charlie off with Dad. We hadn't even know where Sam was.

Saying it was a bad time – with Leah Clearwater burning alive and Sam Uley doing his best at becoming a John Walsh feature (and Chief Swan drinking coffee oblivious to everything) – was a serious understatement.

I thought the dark look I shot Embry summed up my feelings in a nutshell.

"I'm just going to see who's here," I offered to the room at large, for my own benefit as I could tell the difference between a PD Vic and a civilian model sleeping.

Dad was already at the door when I came out of the twin's room – our makeshift sickroom. I didn't need the porch light to see La Push's only Officer under PL 93-638 behind the wheel.

"I just saw Jamie an hour ago," Dad said, squinting through a screen and the long shadows of twilight. I sometimes forgot that his vision wasn't as good as mine – aided in part by his unerring ability to always catch me doing things I shouldn't. "Could've had the decency to tell me he was paying a visit after the meeting. Well, we've got coffee. Even if the neighbors start talking."

As our only neighbors were the Clearwaters - the house to the left of ours had been under construction for two very uneventful years when the company had gone bankrupt – I thought that was the least of our worries.

In light of my non-response, Dad's "_Hrm_," was all he offered before maneuvering the chair around me and into the front room where the television was jacked up to decibels hitherto unknown to man. Charlie hadn't questioned the change in volume with more than a loaded eyebrow and a shout to see if I wanted pizza with my pizza. To find Lincoln Jamie instead of the pizza man was sort of a let down.

"Well, don't just stand there, Jake," Dad said. "Make yourself useful."

I palmed the front lights, flooding the yard and reflecting off the tribal PD decals that were supposed to be evocative of our Quileute ancestry – but really could have come out of any tattooists sample book. Jamie, recognizing my shape behind the screen door, waved. I knew then that for whatever reason he had come to our house it wasn't _yet_ in any kind of official capacity. The truancy officers who had come before Charlie had never offered any sign of encouragement – especially not an easy wave. But Lincoln Jamie was nervous. The scent of it washed off him in waves carried in the light breeze and caused my eyes to narrow of their own volition.

"Officer Jamie," I offered, the door creaking open and I stepped onto the poured concrete porch.

"Wow, Jake, you get bigger every time I see you. What are you now – 6'4, 6'5? I swear you were two inches shorter last week." I technically had been two inches shorter last week.

"Dad thinks it's something in the water," I eyed Jamie's slender 5'9" – far closer to the norm. "Dad's inside watching the game. With Chief Swan." I stood aside to give him access to the house.

"Thanks," Lincoln offered as he moved past me – a matter of a few footsteps into the front room. He removed his hat as soon as he crossed the threshold.

"Lincoln. Just in time for Duke, LSU – although I hate to say that after such a strong game against George Washington, Duke is probably done for," Dad offered with a rueful smile, loud enough that I could hear it over the television.

"I caught the first half on the radio," Jamie was saying as he went into the front room and I diverted into the kitchen for an ice pack to replace the one on Leah's forehead, wondering why Jamie had come to Dad if he'd been confronted about Sam Uley like Charlie had said.

_This is strictly off the record, Billy. There's a lot of pressure to solve this case in Forks. And you know that Chief Swan is only peripherally involved because of the involvement of Isabella – but enough to get a sense of what's going on._

Charlie's two-way was on the kitchen table and after I threw the ice pack at Embry – who in my opinion was spending entirely too much time with Leah Clearwater for someone who wasn't in love with her – I left the house and its uncomfortable cast of characters for the garage.

I was extremely grateful that Leah was too feverish to be coherent – or belligerent. Wrestling her into the backseat of Jared's Caprice had been difficult enough without her flailing arms and our attempts to avoid her hips and breasts… and well, just about every part of her body that we didn't want to show up in our thoughts when she was listening. Leah had a problem of falling out of wolf-form at the worst times, something we were going to have to work on once she pulled through. And she was going to, I was sure of it. No one as cursed as Leah Clearwater was could succumb to something as pedestrian as leech venom.

As I was fairly certain it was feedback that was causing Charlie's problem, I walked around his vehicle four times with the radio volume on high. Nothing. Of course, he'd driven his truck over and not a Forks cruiser. The minute I opened the door to the garage the two-way went off. I turned down the volume, but not the power and walked over to the transistor. By happenstance, I had to walk to the rear of Sam's Chevelle to get there and the radio went dead silent. I ruled out the radio. But something was sending out signals. Because of the garage's construction – galvanized steel framing all around – it was usually a natural dampener to signals, one of the reasons I had an antenna on the roof for my transistor. But something _in_ the garage was setting it off.

It took me more minutes than I care to admit before I realized it was Sam's _car_ that was setting it off. Or something in Sam's car. Leaving the two-way on the counter, I took the stool from the garage outside and disabled the antenna. Returning, I shut the steel door. Nothing could transmit out or in. Yet Charlie's radio _still_ offered feedback. But only at the front of the car.

I had a very bad feeling about this.

Dropping onto my back, I ran my hands along the underside of the Chevelle's frame. I had been under it earlier with a light source, so I felt around the less obvious places. The wheel wells, around the axels… and then I found it. A small black box around the size of an iPod that did not belong on a Chevelle, no matter the model year.

This had Cullen all over it.

***

New Dogs learn New Tricks (Seth)

Although I had been to the Council House more than once in my life, tonight was the first time I had ever been invited. I put on the _new_ new suit Mom had bought me – I was at least four inches too tall for the new one that I'd worn to the middle school Valentine's Day dance only a month and some change ago. I was on the whole showing "remarkable self control," in Jared's words, but I was far from perfect.

What kept me _solid_, and by solid I mean human, was that I knew I would catch hell from Mom if I ruined this new suit by shifting.

I was waiting out front of the house – just around the block from where Lee was burning up with leech venom – when Jared's Caprice came down the block. Embry and Paul were already inside and as I climbed in the backseat I felt pretty overdressed. Paul was wearing jeans and a polo shirt that might have spent the last four months on the floor of his room. Embry was even less formal than that. "Looking sharp, kid," he offered and I didn't detect the slightest hint of embarrassment from him as my cheeks burned. "But I suppose you're used to this kind of thing."

"You could have gone anytime, Embry. Most of the Council meetings _are_ open to anyone who's interested," Jared's dad was the Tribal counselor. Although he was not part of the five member council itself, he often sat in on meetings.

"Not interested."

"Obviously," Jared gave Embry a blatant once-over. "Don't you even have a shirt that doesn't have a stain on it?" Paul laughed – this despite the stain on his – but I wasn't sure how to respond. Everyone knew that Embry's mom had sort of checked out as far as he was concerned, convinced that he was one of those kids who ended up on Dr Phil. I really like Embry, more than just about everyone else except Jake, but I don't really know Embry well enough to know how he'd react, so I pretended to lose interest in the conversation and looked out the window.

"What? I'm overdressed! I knew it." Embry's reflection on the interior window pulled at his shirt – a plain gray t-shirt with some kind of writing on it – as if inspecting it. "I bet the invite wasn't black _shirt_. Damn."

"Maybe Seth can give you his tie?" Paul suggested. I was the only one wearing a tie – the same one I'd worn to Dad's funeral.

Embry must have caught something of my hesitance – as he quickly changed the subject. "So where the hell is Black, anyway? Isn't he the whole reason we're here?" I had a feeling – and it was just a feeling cause I'd only been in the Pack for a couple of days – that no one knew what anyone else was doing. Ever. I had watched the Discovery Channel enough in my time to find this unusual in packs. Particularly as we could read each other's minds. If we had a natural predator – well, we _did_ as the Cullens would have applied for that spot – they would probably use this against us. If I had the balls, something that Lee always reminded me that she'd inherited in my stead, I would have said something. Instead, I held my tongue.

"Quilly." Paul said simply. Quil Ateara had shifted that morning (the Quieleute school had him marked down for "mono") and there was some sort of understanding between Sam and Jacob that had made our pack a quintet. Swallowing as I worked a finger between my tie and neck, I wished I was back with Jake.

Sam was there already. He was kind of a lone wolf for the pack Alpha and was leaning up against his car when Jared pulled up alongside. Although his greetings were genuine – as far as I could tell – there was something about him that was _there_ when he looked at you, but was gone as soon as he'd turned his head. I had a feeling that if he didn't already know my name, Sam Uley would have forgotten it today. "Ready?" He asked and we all nodded.

Mom was there already, sitting in the seat vacated by Dad, and offered me the ghost of a smile she gave when she wanted to support me but not too obviously. She'd been doing that a lot since I graduated into the seventh grade. It had been her suggestion that I ride in with Jared as a show of solidarity. I didn't realize solidarity was needed until I was actually in the meeting room and began to watch the interplay between the board.

I sat through committee reports and budget authorizations and a resolution (that passed easily, the only one) for a plaque for Dad. I learned a lot of things in the two hours I sat on the back bench. That despite the piercing pain in my chest that seemed to linger where my heart was every time someone said my Dad's name, I really _was_ in control of my shifting. Although it was a close thing for a second. I learned that Coke – especially five of them – have the same effect on werewolves as regular guys. But most importantly, I realized that while I had known most of the Council my whole life, they didn't really seem to like each other.

Now Billy Black was the de facto head, although he was only the Member-at-Large this session and not acting President. Everyone deferred to him, even if it was only in body language. Next to him was Linda Ward, the Secretary, who was relatively new to the position and was physically intimidated by the Vice-Chair, Jack Pullen. Pullen was a really large guy – nowhere near wolf size, but packing a couple hundred extra pounds on a tall frame – and his family had made a fortune with frozen clams. If the Res had royalty (outlawed the same time we weren't allowed slaves anymore – a long, long time ago) it was Pullen. And he knew it. Jared's Dad, Mr. Taleant, was very polite, but his body language said he didn't trust Pullen as far as he could throw him which, considering he was pretty short in general, was probably not very far at all. Terry Sims, the Chair, was also Harbor Master for the Quileute Harbor Marina. He was the only one who seemed capable – and willing – of keeping everyone on the matters at hand. And Mom, who had been unanimously named Treasurer after Dad's death, just looked sort of thoughtful.

Of course, all of this was somewhat useless, in my opinion, as soon as they had us in closed session. I immediately got the sense that while Billy and Mom were completely fine with us, most of the Council was uncomfortable with a pack of teenage werewolves. Moreso since news of Mike Newton's death had filtered to the Res. They demanded an accounting for Leah's breaking of the Treaty – Pullen phrased it in just a way that made me want to rip out his throat – and remarked on Jake's absence.

"So you're requesting permission from the Council to bring Charles Swan – a non-member of the Reservation – into the confidence of the Council and Pack?"

"Yes." Sam was doing all the talking and while I shouldn't have thought it, I found him _apathetic_ – one of my spelling words for the week – about it at best. I immediately felt guilty about the thought. Jake and Jared (and I suspect Mr. Taleant) had spent hours going through the Council Codes and rulings – including the _really_ old Quillayute stuff in the library that we had to read out loud to translate. Although we all learned Quillayute in school, our vocabularies were pretty limited. Which is to say we hadn't yet figured out the words for "contingency plans."

"I would like to point out that if not for the breaking of a treaty brokered by our ancestors, the Council would not have been backed into this corner," Terry Sims said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. The rank scent of the tension in the room was almost as real as I was and I was surprised that no one else seemed to realize it. I didn't miss the glance Sims threw Pullen – and then Black. "As you know there is a clear precedent of keeping the secrets of our Tribe close to the chest – tacitly and legally. I cannot even begin to fathom the situation that _could_ – would – occur if the reality of Shifting was made generally known. I _hope_ that every one of you," Sims looked each of us in the eye, "understand the potential dangers that would put every one of you – and this entire Tribe – in more danger than any _teenage_ Wolf or even this Council could comprehend. I don't think we need to look further than the Treaty of Olympia – which you all should be familiar with – to see the potential hazards. Let alone the threat of the Cold Ones."

"Unfortunately Terry," Mom said, almost hesitantly, after Sam could only hang his head, "while I understand and deeply appreciate the potential hazards associated with making the decision to reveal the Change to Chief Swan, I also believe that standing on tradition without thought to the current situation is also detrimental to the Tribe. While the breaking of the Treaty with the Cold Ones was not what we would have wanted, we cannot forget that it _was_ Alice Cullen – who is clearly covered in the Treaty as a member of the Cullen tribe – who was found over the body of Michael Newton. The taking of human life, regardless of tribal affiliation, has always been grounds for the breaking of the Treaty. I would argue – although I am by no means a lawyer," she gave one of her most disarming smiles to Mr. Taleant, something I knew she used with great effect to get what she wanted without force, "that it was the Cullens who voided the contract and not Leah Clearwater's protection of Isabella Swan."

"Yes, but you are by no means unbiased, Sue," this from Pullen, who had narrowed his eyes. "And neither are you a full member of this Council pending a formal election."

"Certainly full-membership in the Council has never before been a prerequisite for stating one's opinion to the Council, Jack? And I would think that my _involvement_ in the proceedings would be more of a help than a hindrance. As I am in full knowledge of the quality of person both my son and _daughter_ are, I trust their opinions and views as members of this Tribe and members of the Pack." She gave Billy Black a pointed look – he was, after all, the Member-at-Large, and supposed to be the voice of the non-Council.

"While I agree with you, Sue," Billy answered slowly, cautiously it seemed to me. "I also have misgivings about the whole thing. Now hear me out –" Billy held up a hand as soon as he thought to be interrupted. "I'm not saying this lightly. Charlie Swan is one of my oldest friends. But he's not Quileute. It's always been my thought that the burden – and yes, I would call it a burden – of knowing about the Shift is a serious charge. It's not something you can just forget or take lightly. We are guardians almost as much as the Pack itself is. But what we are guarding is our heritage, our privacy and our sons – and daughters," he looked at Mom. "It isn't that I don't trust Charlie Swan – I trust him with my life. But he isn't invested in our ways, in our beliefs. The knowledge for someone who is not of the Tribe doesn't have the importance that it does to _us_."

"And yet, somehow, the other Swan is in our confidence. In fact, she appears to be the catalyst for all this change."

"She has never said anything and has promised not to do so."

"That remains to be seen, of course," Billy said with a grimace. "She made these promises after the Cullens had left, so the worth of her promise is dependent on her attachment to their Edward. I can only hope for her sake – and Jake's – that it doesn't prove fatal."

"Who as one of the original signatories of the Treaty is well aware of the existence of Wolves in La Push," Mr. Taleant refuted. "I also wanted to remind the Council of the status of paper work filed for Federal jurisdiction in the Newton case – something I heard from a friend who is a federal judge. While ordinarily this would not affect La Push, as the crime was committed in Forks, apparently there is sufficient evidence to involve the Reservation. The Federal government has jurisdiction over homicide cases as per our Constitution. And," Mr. Taleant added a moment later, "I don't think they would accept a plea of shape changing as sufficient cause to clear one of the Pack."

I laughed – I couldn't help myself – although the elbow Jared sent me was enough to crack ribs.

"You didn't have anything to do with Michael Newton's death did you?" Pullen asked Sam directly. The whole wolf thing was very new – there hadn't been a pack in generations – and some of the older members of the Nation (and on the Council) obviously had a problem with such responsibility in the hands of people so young. Something clicked and I realized that Pullen was jealous. Jealous that instead of the present of Shifting, he had been left with something more like coal.

Sam arched a brow. "Unless late onset fangs are a part of Shifting that I haven't been told about –" he looked at Pullen, who seemed to wilt a little under the look. "Absolutely not."

"Then why don't the cops know a Cullen was there?" Linda Ward asked – the first time she had said anything. "The _Forum_ mentioned Jake by name. But there was no mention of the female Cold One."

"I did not think it was in our best interest to involve the female Cullen when Jacob was questioned." Sam said simply. It was obvious that the Council didn't know about the lone gunman – Victoria.

"With their money and friends you would ask that?" Billy asked. "Alice Cullen could have been tap-dancing on the roof of the Swan house with Newton's dead body in her arms and would never have been mentioned by the _Forum_."

There was a thoughtful moment of silence while the Council seemed to take a collective breath until Terry Sims said, "I'd like to make a motion that we vote on whether the Council authorizes Charles Swan to be made aware of the Quileute wolves." I had the feeling that their lack of thought on the matter was a bad sign.

"I second." Pullen was quick on the up-take.

"Terry?"

"No."

"Pullen?"

"No."

"Black?"

"Um… no."

"Ward. No." Neither Mr. Taleant or Mom got a vote. "The motion does not pass."

The celebration was short-lived however, as the moment Linda Ward went to open the door to the closed chamber we were greeted with what seemed like a battalion of armed Federal Agents and Lincoln Jamie in his uniform (although he didn't carry a gun as per his contract). "I'm sorry, Sam," he just made out before one of the Agents stared Sam down.

"Samuel Uley, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law…" as they read him his Miranda rights, Embry had to lay hands on Paul who was about to jump out of his skin. That was the last thing we needed right now.

"What is the meaning of this?" Pullen was asking to no one and everyone – Billy and Mom a minute or two behind. "Sam Uley has done nothing." I realized a moment or two later that there was a cloud of press outside of the Hall itself. No one bothered to answer Pullen.

"_Listen to Jared_," Sam managed in Quyallute as two agents were leading him out of the Hall. It had all the hallmarks of command and my spine stiffed in deference immediately. "And tell Emily I love her. I'll be home soon."

Although I couldn't help but think he sounded less than hopeful on that score.


End file.
